Unconvincing argument. The court's statement, as I reproduced above, is not about the specifics of the statute, otherwise it would have said "it's theft, just not physical removal". The wording is very clear.

The example of the other case (which, by the way, was only a District Court decision) also seems weak. AFAIK (IANAL), the fact that copyright law preempted state law doesn't mean the two are equal, it just means that both theft and copyright infringement occurred - which is easily seen to be the case, since physical plans were actually removed from a place.