In a split decision with wide-ranging implications, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that states are not allowed to copyright their building codes or the annotations that provide guidance for those regulations.
The New York Times reports that the 5-4 ruling, transcended the typical liberal-conservative split of the court in articulating a broader reading of existing judicial guidance establishing that laws and legislative work cannot be copyrighted.
The decision could help make these codes more widely available for users, including architects, and might help advance the proliferation of design assistance services that use automated processes to plug building codes into Building Information Models and other design review software.
In the decision, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, states, “If everything short of statutes and opinions were copyrightable, then states would be free to offer a whole range of premium legal works for those who can afford the extra benefit. A state could monetize its entire suite of legislative history. With today’s digital tools, states might even launch a subscription or pay-per-law service.”
The case, Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, No. 18-1150, concerns 54 volumes of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, The New York Times reports, a set of documents that contains both the explicit text of the law as well as additional statutes, related materials, and annotations made to help support the texts by a cadre of private lawyers hired to interpret this language. The non-profit group Public.Resource.Org, an organization dedicated to making public information more publicly available, published these codes to its website, allegedly violating the state of Georgia’s copyright claim over the codes.
The case dovetails with ongoing litigation between the software startup UpCodes that Archinect has reported on previously.
The for-profit company has been subject to a copyright infringement lawsuit filed in 2017 by the International Code Council (ICC) that alleges UpCodes’s use of building code standards in its "searchable platform for building codes" amounts to a copyright violation.
UpCodes provides a variety of code-related services for designers and other building industry professionals, including a Revit plug-in that can scan building models for code compliance, and dubs itself as a “spell-check” service for BIM models.
Though the details of the UpCodes case are slightly different than those in the Georgia case, it looks like the company’s cause could be supported by the latest ruling.
7 Comments
this is awesome and hilarious!!! now if they only would have noted that in addition no code can be over 100 pages long including references...
Will be interesting to see how this ruling shakes out in practice. Without reading the ruling or looking into it further, I'm assuming this wouldn't necessarily apply to ICC, right? It's not a state, and doesn't make the code law, it just provides the text which it should still be able to copyright. However, that text would no longer hold the same enforce-ability under copyright once a state adopts it and incorporates it into law, right? ... or does the ruling only apply to the amendments to the original text; that original text is still copyrighted and enforceable by the ICC?
upcodes is fighting this fight as we speak
I know. Waiting to see how that suit turn out as well.
I hope they win, good group of folks led by a guy trained in architecture.
Probably a good thing — anytime information is restricted it becomes more needlessly expensive.
by the way, i had been developing an excel sheet for fast building creation via Zoning, wondering if I'll have time for that now.... I'm one of those cool internet guys, I'll share it no cost....Let me see if it's worth sharing and if you're interested.
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