Protecting and Enhancing Public Access to Codes Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, no.

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, the Pro Codes Act is sensible, bipartisan legislation that strikes a balance between copyright protection and public access to information, thus resolving a clear uncertainty in the law.

This legislation would allow standards developing organizations, or SDOs, to retain their copyrights when their standards are incorporated by reference into the law, so long as they make a copy freely available online.

SDOs are organizations that develop and publish standards to govern certain highly technical industries. These best practices govern everything from consumer safety and household utility installation to home electrical wiring and plumbing planning.

SDOs make sure that your house won't catch on fire, your plumbing is up to code, your water boiler is installed correctly, and everything in between. You rely on your local contractor, and your contractor relies on their SDO standards.

State and local legislatures, which generally do not have the requisite experts on staff to write highly technical standards, often choose to incorporate rigorously developed and diligently updated SDO standards by reference into the law. In this way, legislators can key their State's laws to codes that are regularly updated, as mistakes are fixed, new methods are developed, and technological advancements are incorporated into best practices.

However, this practice exists at the crux of a dilemma in American intellectual property law today. On one hand, everyone typically benefits when local, State, or Federal legislators adopt content developed by SDOs into their laws. The law benefits from dynamic safety codes created by experts in their fields, and SDOs in turn benefit from more customers for their published works. If the copyright to that material were taken away, the incentives for the SDOs would disappear and the mutually beneficial relationship would no longer exist.

On the other hand, Americans also have an essential interest in knowing that they can access the laws that govern them. Because of this principle, once a code is enacted into law, Americans must have access to this information because if you can't find the code, you don't know how it will affect you.

The Pro Codes Act seeks to find the middle ground between these two competing interests. This legislation would allow SDOs to retain their copyrights when their standards are incorporated by reference into the law so long as they make a copy available online at no cost.

Although I support this legislation, I do want to note that the bill could have been improved further had we held a hearing, as I and others had requested. A hearing would have enabled Members to ask questions of stakeholders with various viewpoints, to make any necessary refinements, and to convince more of our colleagues that this bill is the right path forward. Unfortunately, that process did not occur. Be that as it may, I still believe that this legislation would improve our laws by protecting SDOs' intellectual property rights while ensuring that Americans have access to the laws that bind them.

I thank Chairman Issa and Congresswoman Ross for introducing this bipartisan legislation. I urge all Members to support this legislation.

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