236: 'No One Can Own the Law', with Garrett Reynolds
A conversation with Garrett Reynolds about UpCodes' decade-long legal fight to keep building codes free, the impact of the Pro Codes Act, and how sustained litigation shapes the AEC industry.
Garrett Reynolds, co-founder and President of UpCodes, joins the podcast to give an update on the company's decade-long fight to keep building codes free and public. We explore the string of lawsuits UpCodes has faced from the International Code Council, ASTM, and other code publishers since 2017, the Supreme Court and circuit court rulings that established no one can own the law, and the Pro Codes Act, the industry-backed legislation now trying to accomplish in Congress what the publishers couldn't win in court.
This episode is especially relevant for firm leaders and practitioners who rely on adopted codes every day and have never thought much about who controls access to them. Garrett lays out what's actually at stake for firms and their tech stacks if the publishers win, and what a small amount of constituent pressure can do against a well-funded lobbying effort.
Original episode page: https://trxl.co/236
Watch This on YouTube:
Episode Links:
Connect with the Guest
UpCodes and the Free Law Fight
- UpCodes
- Scott Reynolds (Garrett's brother and UpCodes co-founder, previous TRXL guest)
- The Pro Codes Act
- UpCodes: Pro Codes Act
- UpCodes' own explainer and the contact-your-representative widget Garrett references in the episode.
- Joseph "Joe" Gratz, Durie Tangri
- Attorney profile
- The litigator who took UpCodes' first case against the International Code Council and has represented them since.
Previous TRXL Episodes with UpCodes
Garrett's brother Scott has told parts of this same story across these four prior episodes as the fight has evolved.
- Episode 021: "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants"
- Episode 025: "Copyrighting the Building Code"
- Episode 123: "Bringing AI to the Building Code"
- Episode 167: "The Battle Over Building Codes Continues"
The Case Law
- Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress International, Inc. (Fifth Circuit, 2002)
- Wikipedia
- The 2002 en banc ruling Garrett cites as the case that first established codes lose copyright protection once adopted into law, brought by one individual, Peter Veeck, posting his town's building code.
- Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc. (Supreme Court, 2020)
- Wikipedia
- The parallel Supreme Court case, decided 5-4, that Garrett says his own judge was waiting on before ruling in UpCodes' favor. Source of the "no one can own the law" quotes from Justices Thomas, Roberts, and Ginsburg.
The Publishers
- International Code Council (ICC)
- Website
- The organization that has sued UpCodes multiple times since 2017 and is the primary force behind the Pro Codes Act.
- ASTM International
- Website
- Sued UpCodes in 2024 for both copyright and trademark infringement; lost at the Third Circuit in 2026 on a fair-use ruling.
- Facility Guidelines Institute (FGI)
- Website
- Publisher of the hospital-design guidelines that sued UpCodes for copyright in 2022.
About Garrett Reynolds:
Garrett Reynolds is co-founder and President of UpCodes, the Austin-based platform that has put more than 6,000 U.S. building codes online for free and now layers AI tools like plan review and code search on top. He started a PhD in machine learning at UCLA before dropping out to join PlanGrid's ML team, then co-founded UpCodes with his architect brother Scott in 2016 after seeing firsthand how firms were still stapling paper amendments into code books. Since then he's spent close to a decade fighting the publishers who sued UpCodes for posting the codes they're legally required to make public, litigation that's cost the company north of $10 million and, more recently, expanded into lobbying against the industry-backed Pro Codes Act in Congress. He's UpCodes' point person on that fight, from depositions to meetings on Capitol Hill.
