Opinion ID: 27815
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Caselaw; Model Codes Versus Standards

Text: 51 Until recently in our history, it was understood that Wheaton, Banks and nearly every other pertinent case held that copyright protection may not be asserted for the text of the law. 18 The basic proposition was stated by Justice Harlan, writing for the Sixth Circuit: any person desiring to publish the statutes of a state may use any copy of such statutes to be found in any printed book ... Howell v. Miller, 91 F. 129, 137 (6th Cir.1898). 52 As of 1980, the noncopyrightability of the law appeared settled to the First Circuit in BOCA. The court focused on the real holding of Banks and accordingly vacated preliminary injunctive relief to the author of a building code adopted into law by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 19 The court held that BOCA had failed to carry its burden of distinguishing, for preliminary relief purposes, the Massachusetts building code from non-copyrightable statutes and judicial opinions. But the court then remanded the case for further development in light of the novelty of the issue, the insufficiency of the trial court record, and the apparent trend toward adoption of model codes by governmental entities. The court nevertheless was skeptical that BOCA would prevail, commenting 53 it is hard to see how the public's essential due process right of free access to the law (including a necessary right freely to copy and circulate all or part of a given law for various purposes), can be reconciled with the exclusivity afforded a private copyright holder ... 54 BOCA, 628 F.2d at 730. Though not a definitive holding, BOCA clearly favors Veeck's position over that of SBCCI, and it is most closely on point. 55 The record has been developed in this case and, with the perspective gained from other recent caselaw and from the multiple submissions to the court, we have no hesitation in confirming BOCA 's predisposition against the copyrightability of model codes to the extent they have been adopted as law. But the limits of this holding must be explained. Several national standards-writing organizations joined SBCCI as amici out of fear that their copyrights may be vitiated simply by the common practice of governmental entities' incorporating their standards in laws and regulations. 20 This case does not involve references to extrinsic standards. Instead, it concerns the wholesale adoption of a model code promoted by its author, SBCCI, precisely for use as legislation. Caselaw that derives from official incorporation of extrinsic standards is distinguishable in reasoning and result. See CCC Info. Services v. Maclean Hunter Market Reports, Inc., 44 F.3d 61 (2nd Cir.1994); and Practice Management Info. Corp. v. American Medical Ass'n, 121 F.3d 516 (9th Cir.1997), opinion amended by 133 F.3d 1140 (9th Cir.1998). 56 In CCC Information Services, a New York statute required insurance companies to use the Red Book, a privately prepared and copyrighted list of projected automobile values, as one of several standards in calculating the payments upon the total loss of a vehicle. CCC Information Services systematically loaded portions of the Red Book onto its computer network and distributed the information to its customers. One of CCC's theories was that the Red Book had entered the public domain. The Second Circuit addressed the public domain issue briefly, stating that we are not prepared to hold that a state's reference to a copyrighted work as a legal standard for valuation results in loss of the copyright. CCC Info. Services, 44 F.3d at 74. CCC notes the infringer's reliance on the BOCA decision, but it does not opine on that case, confining itself to the precise facts before the court. 57 Practice Management involved the American Medical Association's copyrighted coding system for reporting physicians' services and medical procedures. The Federal Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) contacted and then agreed with AMA to use the AMA's coding system for identifying physicians' services on Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement forms. AMA granted a non-exclusive, royalty-free and irrevocable license to HCFA, without restrictions on the government's ability to reproduce or distribute AMA's codes. There was no evidence that AMA had restricted the code's availability to anyone. The Ninth Circuit held that the HCFA's decision to adopt regulations requiring physicians to use a version of the AMA code on Medicaid claim forms did not place the code in the public domain under Banks. Practice Management, 121 F.3d at 519 ([T]he AMA's right under the Copyright Act to limit or forgo publication of the [coding system] poses no realistic threat to public access.). 58 Both the Second and Ninth Circuits feared that reaching the opposite conclusion in those cases would have expose[d] copyrights on a wide range of privately authored model codes, standards, and reference works to invalidation. Practice Management, 121 F.3d at 519. The Ninth Circuit suggested that federal court rules regarding citations could invalidate the copyrightability of the Blue Book. Id. at 519 n. 5. The Second Circuit feared that a ruling in favor of CCC Information Systems would call into question the copyrightability of school books once they were assigned as part of a mandatory school curriculum. CCC Info Services, 44 F.3d at 74. 59 These decisions, and the hypothetical situations they discuss, are all distinguishable from Veeck. If a statute refers to the Red Book or to specific school books, the law requires citizens to consult or use a copyrighted work in the process of fulfilling their obligations. The copyrighted works do not become law merely because a statute refers to them. See 1 GOLDSTEIN COPYRIGHT, § 2.49 at n. 45.2 (noting that CCC and Practice Management involved compilations of data that had received governmental approval, not content that had been enacted into positive law). Equally important, the referenced works or standards in CCC and Practice Management were created by private groups for reasons other than incorporation into law. To the extent incentives are relevant to the existence of copyright protection, the authors in these cases deserve incentives. And neither CCC nor AMA solicited incorporation of their standards by legislators or regulators. In the case of a model code, on the other hand, the text of the model serves no other purpose than to become law. SBCCI operates with the sole motive and purpose of creating codes that will become obligatory in law. 60 At first glance, Practice Management appears to pose a closer issue because the HCFA did not simply refer physicians to the AMA's coding system. The court's opinion directs the reader to HHS's notice in the Federal Register announcing that HCFA would require physicians to 61 use exclusively a common procedure coding system. The system is the HCFA common procedure coding system (HCPCS). This coding system is to be used for coding procedures that have been performed ... and is basically used for determining reimbursement amounts. HCFA developed the HCPCS in 1979 and 1980 by using the AMA's CPT-4 [the copyrighted coding system] for physician services and adding HCFA-developed codes for some non-physician services. In addition, we developed conversion techniques to prevent unwarranted payment escalation. 62 50 Fed.Reg. 40895, 40897. To be precise, then, HCFA had its own coding system (the HCPCS) that incorporated AMA's code but also included additional information. 63 But unlike Veeck, Practice Management Information Corporation, a commercial publisher of medical textbooks, was not trying to publish its own version of the HCPCS. Practice Management desired to sell a cheaper edition of the AMA's code, which was also used by insurance companies and had other non-governmental uses. It is not clear how the Ninth Circuit would have decided the case if Practice Management had published a copy of the HCPCS. By analogy, the result in this case would have been different if Veeck had published not the building codes of Anna and Savoy, Texas, but the SBCCI model codes, as model codes.