Government contracts are governed by federal common law, a body of law which is separate and distinct from the bodies of law applying to most businesses—the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and the general law of contracts. The UCC applies to contracts for the purchase and sale of goods, and to contracts granting a security interest in property other than land. The UCC is a body of law passed by the U.S. state legislatures and is generally uniform among the states. The general law of contracts, which applies when the UCC does not, is mostly common law, and is also similar across the states, whose courts look to each other's decisions when there is no in-state precedent.