by the governments that ICC encourages. Upon enactment, it is clear that the I-Codes as Adopted function as laws to which the public needs free access. Within this narrow band of substantial adoption by state and local governments, ICC cannot exercise its copyrights in the I-Codes to prevent dissemination of the I-Codes as Adopted.
The Court recognizes that ICC merits incentives in the abstract, and ICC raises several potentially legitimate concerns regarding how a rule that it cannot enforce copyrights in the I-Codes as Adopted might affect its code development process or which codes it prioritizes. But it falls to Congress rather than the courts to vindicate any interests ICC may have with respect to the I-Codes as Adopted. Cf. PRO, 140 S.Ct. at 1511 (dismissing as a matter of law Georgia’s arguments that it needed copyright protection in annotations to induce LexisNexis to prepare affordable annotated codes for widespread distribution).
The Court reiterates that ICC retains its copyright in the I-Codes and related derivative works that do not constitute the law. If Defendants have infringed ICC’s copyrights in the I-Codes, it must be either because they posted the model codes as model codes or otherwise indiscriminately mingled enacted portions of the model
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