What Happened?
The fire codes and building standards that govern your home, workplace, and public spaces may or may not be freely available to read online, and federal courts cannot agree on the answer. The Congressional Research Service (CRS), Congress's nonpartisan in-house research arm, published a new report examining the conflict.
Privately written technical rules, such as fire codes and building standards, become legally binding when governments adopt them, but courts have not settled whether copyright still protects them. Public-access groups argue that once a government adopts a standard as law, anyone should be able to read it without restriction.
The Fifth Circuit held that adopted codes enter the public domain. The Second and Ninth Circuits have held that government adoption does not automatically end copyright protection, leaving the legal status of public access unsettled.
Why Does it Matter to Me?
Congress has tried to resolve the dispute through the Pro Codes Act, which would confirm copyright protection for incorporated standards while requiring they be posted online for free. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has sponsored the bill in at least two consecutive Congresses.
The 118th Congress version failed on the House floor, two 119th Congress House versions have seen no action since being referred to committee in June 2025, and the Pro Codes Act of 2026 was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 19.
Both Sides, Now
Standards-developing organizations argue that copyright protection funds the expert-driven consensus process. The Supreme Court's 2020 decision in *Georgia v. PRO* held that annotations to Georgia's official code were not copyrightable, but the CRS report notes that standards groups interpret that ruling narrowly because most incorporated standards are written by private parties, not government officials.
On the other side, the Fifth Circuit held in *Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress International* that model building codes adopted as law enter the public domain. This past April, the Third Circuit ruled that a company's publication of incorporated building standards likely qualified as fair use, according to LawNext.
The CRS report cautions that even if the Pro Codes Act passed, it would not explicitly address fair use or constitutional defenses, leaving ongoing court disputes potentially unresolved.
What Happens Next?
The report lays out five legislative options: keeping the status quo, enacting the Pro Codes Act, strengthening copyright protection, placing incorporated-by-reference standards in the public domain, or creating statutory licenses.
Two House versions of the Pro Codes Act remain in the House Judiciary Committee and the Senate version sits in the Senate Judiciary Committee; meanwhile, courts keep deciding individual cases, with roughly 85 percent of standards challenged in one major lawsuit found to qualify for fair use.
The House and Senate Judiciary Committees each hold the power to advance the Pro Codes Act. The central question is whether Congress will act before more courts weigh in, and whether any law it passes would actually end the litigation.
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