(2d Cir. 2006) (“[C]ertain judgments involving real or personal property may bind non-party successors in interest to property involved in the action.”) (emphasis in original).
Some model codes in this case derive from the model codes at issue in Veeck, and Defendants highlight sections with nearly identical language. (See Defendants’ Memo at 45–46; Gratz Decl. Exs. 1, 16.) But the model codes here are distinct works as a matter of copyright, each with its own separate registration. Defendants concede that each of the forty I-Codes comprises a distinct copyrighted work. Hence, similarities between those works and SBCCI’s do not make them the same property. Because the model codes in Veeck are not the same as the forty model codes at issue here, many of which may not overlap with the Veeck codes at all, Defendants have failed to show the privity between ICC and SBCCI needed for collateral estoppel to apply.
Apart from privity, Veeck did not raise the identical issue presented here. “When the facts essential to a judgment are distinct in the two cases, the issues in the second case cannot properly be said to be identical to those in the first, and collateral estoppel is inapplicable.” Envtl. Def. v. EPA, 369 F.3d 193, 202 (2d
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