Court Rules in Favor of International Code Council in Copyright Infringement Case Against IAPMO

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has issued a ruling in the copyright infringement case of the International Code Council against the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO).

The court found that IAPMO infringed the Code Council’s and ICC Evaluation Service’s (ICC-ES) copyrighted materials, including ICC-ES proprietary evaluation reports and acceptance criteria. This judgment is the latest step in the ongoing litigation, confirming an earlier ruling by a magistrate judge that recommended finding IAPMO liable for copyright infringement.

The ruling determined that: 

• The Code Council is the owner of valid copyrights for its evaluation reports and acceptance criteria. 
• IAPMO violated these copyrights by downloading and maintaining the Code Council’s materials on its internal servers.   These actions do not qualify as fair use. 
• The Code Council is likely to succeed in proving that IAPMO’s evaluation reports infringe ICC’s copyrights.

As part of the court’s decision, IAPMO has been permanently enjoined from obtaining, downloading or maintaining copies of the Code Council’s copyrighted materials. Additionally, the court has preliminarily enjoined IAPMO from creating reports that substantially replicate the Code Council’s copyrighted evaluation reports and acceptance criteria.

This ruling affirms the Code Council’s efforts to protect its intellectual property and underscores the importance of safeguarding the rigorous processes that support its standards for construction safety and fire prevention.

“The Code Council is committed to ensuring that the products used in the construction of homes and other buildings are safe and meet industry standards. We felt the shortcuts taken by IAPMO in extensively copying ICC content raised serious concerns about their internal processes. The Code Council will continue to work with other industry partners to ensure that third-party testing and evaluation services live up to the trust the public has placed in them and adhere to the highest ethical standards,” said Dominic Sims, CEO of the Code Council. 

About the Lawsuit

On January 13, 2016, ICC-ES, a subsidiary of the Code Council, filed a lawsuit against IAPMO in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for copyright infringement of the Code Council’s proprietary evaluation reports and acceptance criteria.

ICC-ES filed this lawsuit after discovering that IAPMO systematically copied ICC-ES’s evaluation reports, shared them internally on its internal servers, and used substantial portions of them in its own evaluation reports, allowing them to offer faster and less expensive reports than ICC-ES while claiming to ICC-ES customers that their reports were “equal in every way to the reports that you have been receiving from ICC-ES.”

This lawsuit demonstrates the Code Council’s commitment to protecting its copyrighted materials and to ensure the integrity of rigorous processes central to its evaluation reports and acceptance criteria, which thousands of designers, manufacturers and building safety and fire prevention professionals rely on to promote the highest construction safety standards across the globe.

For more information, visit www.iccsafe.org/copyright-protection.