III. CONCLUSION
Two decades ago, in BOCA,[1] the First Circuit wrestled with the serious issues raised by what was then only a "possible trend" toward local, state, and federal adoption of model codes.[2] That court wisely left open for future evaluation the modern realities surrounding technical regulatory codes and standards. As the BOCA court wrote, groups that develop such works "serve an important public function; arguably they do a better job than could the state alone in seeing that complex yet essential regulations are drafted, kept up to date and made available."[3] In like manner, the two federal circuits that subsequently addressed challenges similar to that considered by the First Circuit in BOCA have declined to invalidate copyrights in works incorporated by reference into the law.[4]
In the legislative arena, Congress has decreed the policy that federal agencies adopt privately authored technical standards without voiding the protection afforded to the authors by copyright; and the OMB has directed all federal agencies adopting such standards to respect the copyright protections of the copyright holders —-- the diametric opposite of causing copyright protection to vanish when the work is adopted as law.
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