Slaughter, J.
Dismissal under Trial Rule 12(B)(6) is rarely appropriate when the asserted ground for dismissal is an affirmative defense. To withstand a 12(B)(6) dismissal, the complaint need only allege such facts that, if proved, would entitle the plaintiff to obtain relief from the defendant. A complaint that survives that limited scrutiny states a claim for relief, even if there may lurk on the horizon an unassailable defense. Only where a plaintiff has pleaded itself out of court by alleging, and thus admitting, the essential elements of a defense does its complaint fail to state a claim on which relief can be granted. Here, the trial court found the statute of limitations had expired and dismissed the plaintiff’s complaint with prejudice under Rule 12(B)(6). We hold the dismissal was premature because the face of the complaint did not establish that the asserted claim was time-barred. We thus reverse and remand.
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The face of Bellwether’s complaint does not establish that the statute of limitations had run on its inverse-condemnation claim. Duke Energy argues the claim accrued by operation of law when the Commission adopted the 2002 edition of the National Electric Safety Code. According to Duke Energy, the 2002 Safety Code unambiguously expanded the required safety clearance beyond the ten feet allowed by the 1957 utility easement on Bellwether’s property and thereby effected a taking immediately upon the Safety Code’s incorporation into the administrative code. Bellwether counters that the claim did not accrue until the Safety Code expanded the easement, and that the expansion was not automatic but occurred only when there was a sufficiently high voltage associated with Duke Energy’s operation of its electrical lines.
Bellwether’s claim accrued, conceptually, when the regulatory burden on its property exceeded the ten-foot clearance permitted by the original easement. At this stage, all we know factually is what the complaint alleges, which is that Duke Energy’s maintenance of the electrical lines “currently” imposes a total burden of 23 feet—thirteen feet more than the easement authorized. The complaint does not recite when the additional burden first occurred, only that it was in effect when Bellwether filed its complaint in August 2015. Given the limited factual allegations, we cannot discern whether (or when) any additional burden on Bellwether, beyond the 1957 easement restriction, occurred by operation of law. Because the complaint does not establish that the statute of limitations had already run when Bellwether sued, Duke Energy jumped the gun by arguing the claim’s untimeliness in a motion to dismiss. Based on the current record, we are unable to conclude that Bellwether’s allegations would not entitle it to relief against Duke Energy under any circumstances. We thus reverse the trial court’s judgment dismissing Bellwether’s complaint with prejudice.
II. All persons are charged with knowing the law, but the law must be reasonably accessible to those having to obey it.
Rather than concluding our opinion here, we elect to raise an additional issue sua sponte that the parties and the trial court may wish to consider on remand: whether the 2002 Safety Code was reasonably accessible to Bellwether.
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But the practice of incorporating private standards by reference comes at a cost. The cost may be negligible for regulations that incorporate federal statutes, regulations, and other open-source materials, much of which can now be viewed online for free with just a few extra mouse clicks. But regulations incorporating copyrighted materials are often practically unavailable without the accompanying text, which can be difficult and expensive to obtain.
B. Does incorporation by reference of copyright-protected materials provide meaningful access to laws today?
In November 2002, the Commission published its final rule in the Indiana Register adopting an amendment to Indiana’s Administrative Code that incorporated the 2002 Safety Code by reference. This amendment was available for free online in the Indiana Register, but the Safety Code was not. See 26 Ind. Reg. 328-29 (November 1, 2002). The online amendment advised that copies of the Safety Code could be obtained from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., in Piscataway, New Jersey, and from the Commission’s office in Indianapolis. Id.
Just as the Safety Code must be accessible to persons charged with following it, so too must it be available to courts faced with legal disputes concerning it. The parties did not include a copy of the Safety Code as part of the record on appeal. So we undertook to obtain our own copy—and not without difficulty. One of our employees telephoned the Commission’s office in Indianapolis. Our employee identified herself to the Commission representative by name and title and asked about obtaining a copy of the Code, which turns out to be hundreds of pages long. The Commission’s representative told our employee she could make an appointment to come in during office hours to inspect the Code. But the representative advised that the Commission does not make copies of the Code available for purchase, and that our employee could not check out the Code for copying elsewhere, because of restrictions imposed by the publisher. Our employee did not challenge these instructions, but merely noted them and reported back what she had been told.
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To be clear, we do not prejudge that outcome or foreordain that result here. Legal determinations often turn on concrete facts. And we do not purport to answer the factual questions we have posed rhetorically that may bear on the Code’s accessibility to Bellwether during the time Duke Energy claims the statute of limitations was running. We merely note them as a non-exhaustive list of issues that may warrant further consideration and development on remand.
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Conclusion For these reasons, we reverse the trial court’s judgment dismissing Bellwether’s complaint with prejudice and remand for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. Rush, C.J., and David, Massa, and Goff, JJ., concur.