FALLS CHURCH, Va. - The International Code Council (ICC) and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), Quincy, Mass., have reached out-of-court settlements in three lawsuits. The cases - one brought by ICC and two brought by NFPA - involved copyright and trademark issues.

Neither party admitted any liability or wrongdoing in any of the cases. The settlement protects NFPA's right to continue to publish and distribute its NFPA 5000®, Building Construction and Safety Code® and resolves issues related to NFPA's and ICC's trademarks.

"The time had come to put all these disputes behind us," said Rick Weiland, ICC's COO. "We would rather focus on serving our members and the public than continue to spend a lot of time and money on lawsuits."

Weiland also noted that the settlement agreement includes provisions designed to reduce future lawsuits between the two organizations.

"We were confident we would win the cases, but at tremendous expense into the millions of dollars," Weiland said. "We want to invest our resources in public safety and in the thousands of communities across the country that use our family of International Codes."

As part of the settlement of these disputes, ICC agreed to pay NFPA an undisclosed amount of money for legal fees and costs associated with the litigations.

Publication date: 08/28/2006