The Solicitor General  amicus  essentially concluded that copyright law does not give a  private organization the right to restrict individuals from making copies of the material incorporated by reference in the municipal codes of the two municipalities.  The Solicitor General    stated, "This case involves a comprehensive code specifically created for enactment into law and designed broadly to regulate the primary conduce of private parties, The court of appeals' holding that such a code may be copied by interested members of the public is correct, it is consistent with the views of the only other court of appeals to address the same issue and it does not conflict with any decision of any other court of appeals. There is a broad range of differing governmental uses of a wide variety of different types of privately copyrighted materials, In a few cases, the courts of appeals have addressed the issues arising from such uses; they have divide between those involving the incorporation of copyrighted codes into laws that directly regulate primary conduct and those involving laws that reference copyrighted materials. In future cases, the courts of appeals can be expected to develop the relevant differences between those two categories and thereby clarify the law in this area. To the extent a true conflict develops in the circuits, the court could then review the issue with the benefit of further refinement of the relevant questions by the courts of appeals. Accordingly, further review is unwarranted."

The May 30, 2003 amicus brief by the Solicitor General of the United States acknowledges the significant federal use of private sector standards but gives short shrift to the economic repercussions of the decision on the US standards infrastructure.  

"Petitioner argues that the decision in this case will substantially undermine the financial capacity of standards setting organizations to provide their services because those organizations will no longer be able to rely on sales of copyrighted works. The continued ability of private standards organizations to develop and update their materials at a high level of quality and integrity is of substantial importance to the federal government; by our own count the Code of Federal Regulations contains more than 7000 references to privately developed codes and standards, upon which federal agencies rely in a very wide variety of settings, Nonetheless, predictions do not provide an in independent basis to grant certiorari in this case. If, as petitioner argues, the Fifth Circuit decision were understood as broadly applicable to all government adoption of and reference to privately developed standards and codes, the effect of this decision would still be highly speculative. The extent to which standards setting organizations depend on the sale of copyrighted works no doubt varies widely, and such organizations have survived and prospered despite the threat to their copyright income that has existed at least since the First Circuit's decision in BOCA in 1980. Moreover professional in the fields affected by particular standards and cods may have ample incentive to continue to buy the "official" sets of standards notwithstanding the potential availability of other unofficial editions, Even if profits from sales of copyrighted materials were reduced, professionals in the field and others may have many reasons to ensure that broadly applicable standards and codes of high quality and integrity remain available

The financial and operational  implications (see also  footnote five) of  the June 10, 2002 decision  of  United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (293 F.3d 791 (5^th Cir. 2002)).  on standards developers whose codes might become laws and regulations or be referenced in laws   was identified in the  Dissenting opinion to the Fifth court decision  by WIENER, Circuit Judge, joined by KING, Chief Judge, and HIGGINBOTHAM, DAVIS, STEWART, and DENNIS, Circuit Judges, dissenting:

Technical codes and standards have become necessary, pervasive, and indispensable ingredients of Twenty-First Century life in this country; regrettably, today's majority opinion has a real potential of drastically changing the societal landscape through that opinion's predictably deleterious effects on these codes and standards, their authors, and the public and private entities that daily use and depend on them. Despite efforts to clothe its ruling in classic copyright lingo ---- "public domain," "fact/expression," "merger" ---- in holding for Veeck under the discrete facts of this case, the majority had to (and did) adopt a per se rule that a single municipality's enactment of a copyrighted model code into law by reference strips the work of all copyright protection, ipso facto. Firmly believing that for this court to be the first federal appellate court to go that far is imprudent, I respectfully dissent  In the absence of an expressed pronouncement from either the Supreme Court or Congress, our creation of an automatic rule rendering the copyright of a model code nugatory per se when and if it is enacted into  law is unwise, imprudent, and far in excess of our authority.  Before such  a work is enacted into law, the Copyright Act unquestionably affords copyright protection to its author; and Congress has given no indication that, on enactment, this protected status evanesces ipso facto as to the whole universe of potential copiers. 

Foot note one

Indeed there are such transparency obligations on central governments  such as US federal agencies  within the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade.  

Article 2: Preparation, Adoption and Application of Technical Regulations by Central Government