Why the Accounting Standards Codification Is Public Here

Purpose of this state­ment

First pub­lished Sep­tem­ber 10, 2026; revised Sep­tem­ber 11 and Sep­tem­ber 22, 2026. This state­ment ex­plains why this site makes the Fi­nan­cial Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Board’s Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Cod­i­fi­ca­tion (the “Cod­i­fi­ca­tion” or “ASC”) avail­able to stu­dents and the public, and on what terms.

The state­ment is a summary. The full analy­sis, with its survey of federal law, its reading of the license, its copy­right and con­tract ar­gu­ments, and its pro­pos­als for durable access, is the author’s article Closing the GAAP: Copy­right, Fair Use, and Public Access to FASB’s Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Cod­i­fi­ca­tion, avail­able on SSRN.¹ Where this state­ment and the article differ, the article con­trols. Readers who wish to cite the ar­gu­ment should cite the article. This re­vi­sion brings the state­ment into line with the article as pub­lished on Sep­tem­ber 14, 2026.

The short version is this. Federal law re­quires public com­pa­nies and many other or­ga­ni­za­tions to follow U.S. GAAP. Since 2009 the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion has been the single au­thor­i­ta­tive source of non­govern­men­tal GAAP. A command to conform to that frame­work selects the whole rule­book, because its scope rules, ex­cep­tions, and ef­fec­tive dates decide which pro­vi­sions govern a given report. The Fi­nan­cial Ac­count­ing Foun­da­tion (FAF) offers a free viewer, but its license grants per­son­al, non­com­mer­cial use only and re­stricts copying, storage, and linking. Con­trollers, au­di­tors, ad­vis­ers, and teach­ers cannot rely on that grant for the work the law re­quires of them. Both the cases on stan­dards adopted into law and the fair-use statute support faith­ful pub­li­ca­tion of the com­plete current sub­stan­tive Cod­i­fi­ca­tion. This site is one such pub­li­ca­tion.

Why access to the ASC matters

Should a teacher need per­mis­sion to put an ac­count­ing rule on a lecture slide? Should an adviser be barred from linking to the text that sup­ports their advice? FAF’s access terms impose those re­stric­tions on rules that federal law re­quires much of the economy to follow.

The reach is doc­u­ment­ed. A Sep­tem­ber 2026 in­ven­to­ry of federal law records 785 dis­tinct Code of Federal Reg­u­la­tions section or ap­pen­dix ci­ta­tions across 39 CFR titles, and 83 United States Code section ci­ta­tions across 16 titles, that ref­er­ence GAAP, FASB, or the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion. Seventy-six of the reg­u­la­to­ry ci­ta­tions name FASB or the ASC ex­press­ly. Three Ed­u­ca­tion De­part­ment reg­u­la­tions go further and for­mal­ly in­cor­po­rate iden­ti­fied ASC ma­te­r­i­al by ref­er­ence, with dated edi­tions and the ap­proval of the Di­rec­tor of the Federal Reg­is­ter.² Those ref­er­ences reach public-company re­port­ing, banking and Farm Credit su­per­vi­sion, Small Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion lending, federal awards, em­ploy­ee benefit plans, defense con­tract­ing, student aid, and tax com­pu­ta­tions.

The text is needed before an or­ga­ni­za­tion even knows which rules govern it. A credit union di­rec­tor who asks an ac­coun­tant to explain a capital re­quire­ment needs more than the reg­u­la­tion’s words, because the capital rule defines GAAP by ref­er­ence to the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion. The ac­coun­tant must compare current scope rules, de­f­i­n­i­tions, ex­cep­tions, and ef­fec­tive dates across Topics before con­clud­ing that a Topic applies, or that it does not. Re­stric­tions on saving the rel­e­vant text, linking a col­league to it, or sharing it with an outside adviser add cost to that inquiry, and smaller or­ga­ni­za­tions and smaller ad­vis­ers bear that cost least easily.³

Those costs sit on top of a charge Con­gress already imposes. Issuers fund stan­dard setting through a manda­to­ry ac­count­ing support fee that func­tions eco­nom­i­cal­ly like an ear­marked tax, and its burden spreads through prices, wages, and in­vest­ment returns to the public at large. Li­censed access adds a second cost channel, paid by the same public.⁴ The article’s po­si­tion, and this site’s, is that the public that must follow and finance these rules must also be free to pre­serve, share, study, and explain them.

What has been pub­lished here, and how

This site presents a study edition drawn from FASB’s public viewer at asc.fasb.org.⁵ The published provenance record records re­trieval from Sep­tem­ber 9 through Sep­tem­ber 10, 2026, in UTC. That is a re­trieval window, not a de­ter­mi­na­tion that every para­graph was ef­fec­tive on those dates. The source in­cludes pending changes, and the record leaves the edition-wide ef­fec­tive date un­de­ter­mined. Readers must check the ap­plic­a­ble re­port­ing period, entity type, and tran­si­tion pro­vi­sions before relying on a treat­ment.

Com­po­nent	Extent
Cod­i­fi­ca­tion Topics	97, span­ning every Area from General Prin­ci­ples through In­dus­try
Subtopics	540, each pre­sent­ed as a single read­able page with all of its Sec­tions
Source para­graphs	23,898, car­ry­ing of­fi­cial ci­ta­tions (for example, ASC 606-10-25-1) as stable, link­able anchors
SEC content (“S” Sec­tions)	437 Sec­tions holding 921 para­graphs of Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion rules, re­leas­es, and staff guid­ance that FASB re­pro­duces within the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion
Glos­sary	1,287 defined terms, linked from the text in which they appear
Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Updates and related notices	310 pages of FASB-pub­lished update ma­te­r­i­al ref­er­enced by the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion
Figures and FASB-pub­lished PDF doc­u­ments	1,289 figures and 552 PDF doc­u­ments that FASB dis­trib­utes pub­licly along­side the text

The edition is free. There is no fee, sub­scrip­tion, reg­is­tra­tion, ad­ver­tis­ing, or data col­lec­tion beyond or­di­nary web-server op­er­a­tion. Nothing on the site is sold. The edition adds labeled, gen­er­at­ed study aids, in­clud­ing plain-English sum­maries, key points, and concept indexes, along­side nav­i­ga­tion, glos­sary links, and search. Gen­er­at­ed ma­te­r­i­al is kept dis­tinct from source text and directs readers back to the cited para­graphs.

The article draws a content bound­ary that this edition follows. The sub­stan­tive Cod­i­fi­ca­tion is the ac­count­ing guid­ance to­geth­er with the de­f­i­n­i­tions, scope, ex­cep­tions, im­ple­men­ta­tion ma­te­r­i­al, and re­la­tion­ships needed to in­ter­pret it. It ex­cludes FAF’s website soft­ware and visual design. Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Updates are not in­de­pen­dent­ly au­thor­i­ta­tive under FASB State­ment No. 168, though they carry tran­si­tion in­for­ma­tion readers need; they are pre­sent­ed here as update ma­te­r­i­al, not as the rule­book. The SEC pas­sages carry au­thor­i­ty from their own source and are outside do­mes­tic copy­right as gov­ern­ment works.⁶

How the ASC became au­thor­i­ta­tive

The access problem is the product of four in­sti­tu­tion­al choices, each made in public law or under public over­sight.

Recog­ni­tion. In 1973 the SEC rec­og­nized FASB pro­nounce­ments as au­thor­i­ta­tive unless the Com­mis­sion de­ter­mined oth­er­wise. In 2002, section 19(b) of the Se­cu­ri­ties Act, added by the Sar­banes-Oxley Act, au­tho­rized the Com­mis­sion to rec­og­nize as “gen­er­al­ly ac­cept­ed” the prin­ci­ples of a private stan­dard setter meeting statu­to­ry cri­te­ria.⁷ In April 2003 the Com­mis­sion de­ter­mined that FASB and FAF met those cri­te­ria and stated that reg­is­trants “are re­quired to con­tin­ue to comply with those stan­dards in prepar­ing fi­nan­cial state­ments filed with the Com­mis­sion, unless the Com­mis­sion directs oth­er­wise.”⁸

Funding. Section 109 of Sar­banes-Oxley pays the rec­og­nized stan­dard setter’s budget from ac­count­ing support fees as­sessed against issuers. The statute de­clares the re­ceipts not to be public monies, pro­vides for Com­mis­sion review, and permits pub­li­ca­tion and other revenue on the con­di­tion that, in the Com­mis­sion’s judg­ment, it does not jeop­ar­dize actual or per­ceived in­de­pen­dence.⁴ FASB’s 2025 audited state­ments report the support fee as its entire revenue.⁹ Con­gress chose that design after the SEC warned in 2002 that firms and com­pa­nies could in­flu­ence the stan­dard setter by with­hold­ing con­tri­bu­tions and pub­li­ca­tion pur­chas­es. The funding clas­si­fi­ca­tion settles legal status only. It does not make FASB staff federal em­ploy­ees or place their work in the public domain, and this state­ment does not claim oth­er­wise.

Con­sol­i­da­tion. In 2009 FASB State­ment No. 168 made the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion the source of au­thor­i­ta­tive non­govern­men­tal, non-SEC ac­count­ing prin­ci­ples and de­clared every­thing outside it nonau­thor­i­ta­tive. ASC 105-10-05-1 states that rule; ASC 105-10-05-2 and 105-10-05-3 explain how to proceed when the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion is silent, first by analogy to au­thor­i­ta­tive guid­ance and then through nonau­thor­i­ta­tive sources such as prac­tice, IFRS, and text­books.¹⁰ The SEC re­spond­ed with in­ter­pre­tive guid­ance di­rect­ing that ref­er­ences in its rules and staff guid­ance to su­per­seded stan­dards “should be un­der­stood to mean the cor­re­spond­ing ref­er­ence in the FASB Cod­i­fi­ca­tion.”¹¹

Dis­tri­b­u­tion. In Feb­ru­ary 2023 FAF re­placed its paid Pro­fes­sion­al View with what it called “en­hanced free access.” That change ex­pand­ed search, print­ing, and copying for per­son­al viewing. It did not open the service to pro­fes­sion­al use or public reuse. The landing page offers the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion “For Per­son­al and Non-Com­mer­cial Use,” and the October 10, 2024 License Agree­ment li­cens­es access “for per­son­al uses only,” bars use “for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es,” and directs anyone with other uses to write to FAF for per­mis­sion.¹² FAF’s li­cens­ing busi­ness con­tin­ued: its audited ac­counts report FASB-content li­cens­ing revenue of $17.903 million in 2022, before the viewing change, and $19.138 million in 2025.¹³ The viewer itself is also only as good as the site that de­liv­ers it. For four­teen years the free Basic View offered no search at all; the current viewer’s search works by literal token match­ing, and in Sep­tem­ber 2026 a search for “cryp­tocur­ren­cy” re­turned nothing al­though Subtopic 350-60 governs crypto assets. The saved viewer pages disable user scaling and fail to reflow on a phone-sized screen without JavaScript, which makes the viewer’s com­pli­ance with web-ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty guid­ance doubt­ful.¹⁴

The SEC reviews the support fee an­nu­al­ly and, in its 2026 order, con­sid­ered the in­ter­re­lat­ed budgets of FAF, FASB, and GASB in ap­ply­ing the ad­di­tion­al-revenue con­di­tion. FAF’s audited ac­counts do not dis­close in­di­vid­ual li­censees’ shares, so the public record cannot show how de­pen­dent the stan­dard setter’s parent is on par­tic­u­lar firms.¹⁵ The in­sti­tu­tion­al bargain is plain: public law rec­og­nizes the stan­dards and funds their pro­duc­tion, while FAF con­trols the terms on which the public can keep and share the fin­ished rule­book.

The ASC as a legal rule­book

The chain from legal duty to ac­count­ing source

Section 13 of the Ex­change Act re­quires covered issuers to file reports and au­tho­rizes the Com­mis­sion to pre­scribe their ac­count­ing methods; section 13(b)(2) re­quires books, records, and in­ter­nal con­trols that permit prepa­ra­tion of state­ments “in con­for­mi­ty with gen­er­al­ly ac­cept­ed ac­count­ing prin­ci­ples.”¹⁶ Reg­u­la­tion S-X sup­plies the con­for­mi­ty rule: fi­nan­cial state­ments not pre­pared in ac­cor­dance with GAAP “will be pre­sumed to be mis­lead­ing or in­ac­cu­rate,” while el­i­gi­ble foreign private issuers may use IFRS as issued by the IASB.¹⁷ Smaller re­port­ing com­pa­nies and broker-dealers have their own express GAAP re­quire­ments.¹⁸ The SEC rec­og­nizes FASB; FASB des­ig­nates the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion as the source of its au­thor­i­ta­tive prin­ci­ples. To­geth­er those in­stru­ments make the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion the frame­work against which a do­mes­tic issuer’s con­for­mi­ty is judged.

A GAAP duty selects the whole rule­book

The legal command selects a frame­work before anyone knows the ac­count­ing answer. To apply it, an ac­coun­tant must clas­si­fy the trans­ac­tion and the entity, find the rel­e­vant Topic, and read its scope, ex­cep­tions, elec­tions, and ef­fec­tive dates. A rule may exclude one trans­ac­tion yet govern another. A tran­si­tion pro­vi­sion may pre­serve an old treat­ment for one period and require a new one for the next. Those pro­vi­sions decide which sub­stan­tive para­graph con­trols. Reading only a para­graph already known to apply would skip the rules that make it ap­plic­a­ble.

This differs from a legal ref­er­ence to in­dus­try prac­tice, which can be proved from many sources. Here federal law re­quires GAAP con­for­mi­ty, the SEC has rec­og­nized the stan­dard setter, and FASB has des­ig­nat­ed one au­thor­i­ta­tive corpus and a hi­er­ar­chy for using it. Each entity applies only the pro­vi­sions its facts require, but a public edition must serve every entity covered by the GAAP duties and remain usable when facts, rules, and re­port­ing dates change. The union of those paths runs through the current sub­stan­tive Cod­i­fi­ca­tion. An editor cannot choose the gov­ern­ing subset in advance for all readers. The se­lec­tion stops at the frame­work: the website that hosts it, and other ma­te­r­i­al FAF pub­lish­es there, lie outside it.

The Second Circuit’s de­ci­sion in Indiana Public Re­tire­ment System v. SAIC shows what reading the frame­work means in prac­tice. The court cor­rect­ed a dis­trict court that had applied the wrong dis­clo­sure thresh­old under the loss-con­tin­gency stan­dard, because the general thresh­old and its nar­row­er ex­cep­tion sit side by side. A reader given one thresh­old without its neigh­bor would mis­un­der­stand the duty.¹⁹ A public repos­i­to­ry must pre­serve the re­la­tion­ships through which readers iden­ti­fy the gov­ern­ing rule.

How federal law uses GAAP

Federal pro­vi­sions assign GAAP dif­fer­ent roles. The fol­low­ing se­lec­tion, taken from the article, pairs broad con­for­mi­ty duties with two express in­cor­po­ra­tions of named ASC ma­te­r­i­al. Each pro­vi­sion must be read within its own cov­er­age rules, ex­cep­tions, and ef­fec­tive dates; a GAAP re­quire­ment for one purpose is not a re­quire­ment to apply every ASC pro­vi­sion for every other purpose.²

Setting	Pro­vi­sion	Ac­count­ing re­quire­ment
SEC filings	17 C.F.R. § 210.4-01(a)(1)	Fi­nan­cial state­ments de­part­ing from GAAP are pre­sumed mis­lead­ing or in­ac­cu­rate unless the SEC pro­vides oth­er­wise
Insured banks	12 U.S.C. § 1831n(a)(2)	Ac­count­ing prin­ci­ples for reports to federal banking agen­cies must be uniform and con­sis­tent with GAAP
Insured credit unions	12 U.S.C. § 1782(a)(6)(C); 12 C.F.R. § 702.2	Re­quired reports use GAAP-con­sis­tent prin­ci­ples; the capital rule ex­press­ly defines GAAP through the ASC
Farm Credit in­sti­tu­tions	12 C.F.R. §§ 621.2, 621.3(a)–(b)	Records and fi­nan­cial reports follow GAAP; the de­f­i­n­i­tion names FASB and other rec­og­nized au­thor­i­ta­tive sources
SBA Su­per­vised Lenders	13 C.F.R. § 120.463(a)–(b)	Accrual books and records follow FASB GAAP, sup­ple­ment­ed by SBA prin­ci­ples; the annual audit ad­dress­es GAAP com­pli­ance
Federal award costs	2 C.F.R. § 200.403(e)	Al­low­able costs must be de­ter­mined under GAAP, subject to stated ex­cep­tions for gov­ern­ments and Indian Tribes
Em­ploy­ee benefit plans	29 U.S.C. § 1023(a)(3)(A)	The in­de­pen­dent ac­coun­tant’s annual-report opinion ad­dress­es fair pre­sen­ta­tion under con­sis­tent­ly applied GAAP
Defense con­trac­tors	10 U.S.C. § 3802(c)(1)	A GAAP-com­pli­ant ac­count­ing system is a con­di­tion of re­ceiv­ing per­for­mance-based pay­ments
Student-aid in­sti­tu­tions	34 C.F.R. § 668.23(d)(1), (i)	Re­quires GAAP fi­nan­cial state­ments and uses ASC 850 for related en­ti­ties; for­mal­ly in­cor­po­rates the spec­i­fied ASC 850 edition
Student-aid fi­nan­cial ratios	34 C.F.R. § 668.172(c)–(e)	Uses ASC 205 and ASU 2016-02 (Topic 842) in fi­nan­cial ratios; for­mal­ly in­cor­po­rates spec­i­fied edi­tions

State pro­fes­sion­al rules and the AICPA’s Ac­count­ing Prin­ci­ples Rule add par­al­lel duties outside the federal census. Ohio names the ASC as the primary au­thor­i­ta­tive source for non­govern­men­tal en­ti­ties; the AICPA in­ter­pre­ta­tion iden­ti­fies the ASC as the ac­count­ing prin­ci­ples its rule con­tem­plates.²⁰ Tax law uses fi­nan­cial-state­ment mea­sures as inputs under sec­tions 451(b) and 56A, giving the ac­count­ing input a role and only that role.²¹

Guernsey and the 2009 con­sol­i­da­tion

Shalala v. Guernsey Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal de­scribed GAAP as far from a single-source rule­book, count­ing nine­teen po­ten­tial­ly con­flict­ing sources and a hi­er­ar­chy for choos­ing among them, and held that the Medicare reg­u­la­tions there imposed no GAAP duty at all.²² In 1995 that de­scrip­tion was ac­cu­rate. The source struc­ture changed in 2009 when FAS 168 con­sol­i­dat­ed au­thor­i­ta­tive non-SEC GAAP into one Cod­i­fi­ca­tion and Topic 105 sup­plied the rule for silence. Guernsey, Thor Power Tool, and United States v. Simon leave sep­a­rate legal re­quire­ments in place: con­for­mi­ty with GAAP settles the ac­count­ing ques­tion, not every legal one. For the duty to comply with GAAP, the ASC now sup­plies the rule­book, and whoever must comply must read it.²³

What no in­stru­ment sup­plies is au­thor­i­ty over copy­right. The SEC’s ex­per­tise lets it rec­og­nize a stan­dard setter and read its own rules. Copy­right law decides whether the public may copy the rule­book.

Copy­right and public access

Two ques­tions must be kept apart. The first is au­thor­ship: FASB wrote the stan­dards as a private body, and nothing here dis­putes that its text was copy­rightable when written. The second is what gov­ern­ment did with that text af­ter­ward. Two routes follow from the second ques­tion. The cases on pri­vate­ly drafted codes adopted as law ask whether adop­tion changes the public’s rights in the text. Fair use sup­plies a second route if private copy­right sur­vives adop­tion. The article argues that both routes support com­plete pub­li­ca­tion.

No one can own the law

The Supreme Court’s gov­ern­ment-edicts de­ci­sion in Georgia v. Public.Re­source.Org rests on the prin­ci­ple “that no one can own the law.”²⁴ Its holding turns on the author’s iden­ti­ty and func­tion, and it ex­press­ly dis­tin­guished private parties. FASB is a private body, and manda­to­ry funding leaves its staff private em­ploy­ees, so the edicts rule does not apply di­rect­ly. What sur­vives is the Court’s account of access: it re­ject­ed the ar­gu­ment that copy­right in­cen­tives justify de­part­ing from the Act, and it ob­served that un­cer­tain­ty and pos­si­ble penal­ties deter cit­i­zens, lawyers, and re­search com­pa­nies from using legal works.²⁵ Banks v. Man­ches­ter con­nect­ed public salaries with the absence of a private in­ter­est in the law, and treated the law as some­thing that must be free for pub­li­ca­tion. The First Circuit carried those con­cerns into private stan­dards in BOCA v. Code Tech­nol­o­gy, and Howell v. Miller es­tab­lished that law does not become private merely by passing through a private edition.²⁶

The Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc in Veeck, held that a pub­lish­er did not in­fringe by re­pro­duc­ing pri­vate­ly drafted model codes that two Texas towns had enacted. The court refused to reduce public access to what­ev­er minimum the copy­right holder allowed: public own­er­ship of the law means it is in the public domain “for what­ev­er use the cit­i­zens choose to make of it.”²⁷ Veeck also sup­plies a merger route: once the code is law, its precise text is the fact of what the law re­quires, and no one can publish an au­thor­i­ta­tive copy in dif­fer­ent words.²⁸ In 2024 the Fifth Circuit reaf­firmed Veeck over a direct request to over­rule it, ap­ply­ing it to a com­mer­cial pub­lish­er’s repli­cas, and the Supreme Court de­clined review.²⁹

For the ASC, the merger ar­gu­ment starts with the re­port­ing duty. A text­book may explain GAAP in other words, but it cannot replace the au­thor­i­ta­tive wording against which con­for­mi­ty is as­sessed. If the duty adopts the in­te­grat­ed rule­book, ex­clu­sive control over re­pro­duc­ing that rule­book is control over pub­li­ca­tion of the rule itself. Its dis­put­ed premise is the legal effect of the general con­for­mi­ty command, which the pre­ced­ing section ad­dress­es. Veeck dis­tin­guished ref­er­ences to ex­trin­sic works such as the ma­te­ri­als in CCC and Prac­tice Man­age­ment, and warned against mixing enacted text with un­adopt­ed ma­te­r­i­al. FASB’s work is main­tained to supply stan­dards with a rec­og­nized legal role, which is closer to pro­duc­tion for adop­tion than to a law’s in­ci­den­tal ref­er­ence to a novel.

Fair use of in­cor­po­rat­ed stan­dards

The D.C. Circuit’s 2023 de­ci­sion in ASTM v. Public.Re­source.Org af­firmed fair use for non­com­mer­cial pub­li­ca­tion of stan­dards in­cor­po­rat­ed by ref­er­ence into federal reg­u­la­tions.³⁰ The court found the re­pub­lish­er’s purpose “very dif­fer­ent—to provide the public with a free and com­pre­hen­sive repos­i­to­ry of the law,” pub­lish­ing “only what the law is, not what in­dus­try groups may regard as current best prac­tices.”³¹ On amount, “[i]f an agency has given legal effect to an entire stan­dard, then its entire re­pro­duc­tion is rea­son­able in re­la­tion to the purpose of the copying,” and “even ex­plana­to­ry and back­ground ma­te­r­i­al will aid in un­der­stand­ing and in­ter­pret­ing legal duties.”³² On market effect, the court held that even if the post­ings lowered demand, “we would also have to con­sid­er the sub­stan­tial public ben­e­fits of free and easy access to the law,” and it re­ject­ed the stan­dards de­vel­op­ers’ online reading rooms as equiv­a­lent access.³³

In April 2026 the Third Circuit ex­tend­ed that rea­son­ing in a prece­den­tial opinion, ASTM v. UpCodes, to a for-profit pub­lish­er dis­play­ing stan­dards in­cor­po­rat­ed through an in­ter­me­di­ate build­ing code.³⁴ It held the use trans­for­ma­tive because the pub­lish­er conveys “only what the law is,”³⁵ dis­tin­guished Ha­chette on that ground,³⁶ treated direct and in­di­rect in­cor­po­ra­tion alike,³⁷ and held that “[t]he scope of the ref­er­ence con­trols the extent of in­cor­po­ra­tion.”³⁸ It found it rea­son­able to copy non­manda­to­ry por­tions of a stan­dard in­cor­po­rat­ed in full, since “[a] con­trary ruling would be blind to the re­al­i­ties of how people in­ter­pret and use law.”³⁹ Com­mer­cial­i­ty was “mod­er­at­ed by the fact that users pay for access to UpCodes’ pro­pri­etary tools and tech­nol­o­gy, not for access to the Works,”⁴⁰ and “[t]he mere pos­si­bil­i­ty of ob­tain­ing a free tech­ni­cal stan­dard does not nullify the public ben­e­fits as­so­ci­at­ed with en­hanced access to law.”⁴¹ Two limits apply: the appeal con­cerned a pre­lim­i­nary in­junc­tion, and most chal­lenged copies were of su­per­seded edi­tions. The holding sup­plies prece­den­tial rea­son­ing, limited to the stan­dards and edi­tions before the court.

The limits the ar­gu­ment must respect

CCC In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices with­held merger and public-domain treat­ment from a vehicle-val­u­a­tion guide that re­flect­ed ed­i­to­r­i­al opinion and that reg­u­la­tions per­mit­ted parties to replace.⁴² Prac­tice Man­age­ment pre­served the AMA’s copy­right in a man­dat­ed coding system, on a record where the agency held a royalty-free license, could choose a com­pet­ing system, and no provider had trouble ob­tain­ing the codes; the court iden­ti­fied fair use and a wider license as re­spons­es if access were denied, and found misuse on sep­a­rate ex­clu­siv­i­ty facts.⁴³ The ASC dispute con­cerns access on ma­te­ri­al­ly dif­fer­ent terms: the sole au­tho­rized source offers per­son­al-use viewing while its license with­holds the copying and pro­fes­sion­al uses through which the stan­dards are applied.

Amer­i­can Dental As­so­ci­a­tion v. Delta Dental re­ject­ed a rule denying copy­right to useful tax­onomies and ex­press­ly named FASB manuals among the works that rule would strip of pro­tec­tion.⁴⁴ That de­ci­sion defeats an ar­gu­ment based only on use­ful­ness or com­mit­tee au­thor­ship, and Feist and Baker v. Selden rec­og­nize pro­tec­tion for orig­i­nal se­lec­tion and arrange­ment even in an ac­count­ing system.⁴⁵ But the ASC’s arrange­ment cannot be sep­a­rat­ed from the rules it arranges without break­ing the legal ref­er­ence. Federal rules in­cor­po­rate by Topic number, courts apply stan­dards by para­graph, and to cite ASC 850-10-50-1 is to name a po­si­tion in FAF’s hi­er­ar­chy. The arrange­ment is the ad­dress­ing system of the adopted frame­work.

The May 2026 order in Texas As­so­ci­a­tion of School Boards v. Texans for Ex­cel­lence in Ed­u­ca­tion allowed a com­pi­la­tion claim over al­leged­ly orig­i­nal se­lec­tion, coding, arrange­ment, and ex­plana­to­ry text to survive dis­missal, de­clined to resolve fair use on the com­plaint, and denied a pre­lim­i­nary in­junc­tion for lack of ir­repara­ble harm.⁴⁶ It is an adverse analogy for copying sep­a­ra­ble ed­i­to­r­i­al con­tri­bu­tions. Thomson Reuters v. Ross re­ject­ed fair use for copying Westlaw head­notes to build a com­pet­ing search tool, and placed the burden of proving fair use on the copier.⁴⁷ The subject of the copying changes the answer. Westlaw’s head­notes explain law avail­able from the courts and any other pub­lish­er; the ASC is the ac­count­ing re­quire­ment itself, and FAF is its only source. The Third Circuit has asked the Ross parties to address UpCodes and heard ar­gu­ment in June 2026.⁴⁸

The four factors applied to the current Cod­i­fi­ca­tion

Section 107 names teach­ing, schol­ar­ship, and re­search among the pur­pos­es for which copying may be fair and directs courts to weigh four factors to­geth­er.⁴⁹ Eldred de­scribes fair use as one of copy­right’s “built-in First Amend­ment ac­com­mo­da­tions”; when the ex­pres­sion at issue is the text of a binding rule, that ac­com­mo­da­tion is doing its core work.⁵⁰ The use weighed here is faith­ful pub­li­ca­tion of the in­te­grat­ed frame­work for public legal un­der­stand­ing, not dis­tri­b­u­tion of pub­lish­er soft­ware or a com­pet­ing com­mer­cial cod­i­fi­ca­tion.

Purpose and char­ac­ter. Warhol re­quires an ob­jec­tive inquiry into the par­tic­u­lar use and its jus­ti­fi­ca­tion; a better in­ter­face or an ed­u­ca­tion­al label does not by itself make com­plete re­dis­tri­b­u­tion trans­for­ma­tive.⁵¹ The stan­dards cases supply a more spe­cif­ic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion: a work first pub­lished to state in­dus­try stan­dards can be re­pub­lished to iden­ti­fy rules that gov­ern­ment has made legally con­se­quen­tial, and faith­ful re­pro­duc­tion serves that purpose because a reader needs to know what the gov­ern­ing text says. The ASC presents a genuine dif­fi­cul­ty within that rea­son­ing. Unlike a su­per­seded tech­ni­cal stan­dard re­tained in a build­ing code, the current Cod­i­fi­ca­tion serves pro­fes­sion­al ac­count­ing and legally re­quired re­port­ing at the same time, so the line between law and best prac­tice is less sharp than it was in the ap­pel­late records. That is FAF’s strongest purpose ob­jec­tion. But the same cur­rent­ness that in­creas­es market overlap also makes the text nec­es­sary for present com­pli­ance. A pub­li­ca­tion limited to closed re­port­ing periods would leave the present legal oblig­a­tion de­pen­dent on private per­mis­sion. The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is testable through fea­tures this edition has: source ci­ta­tions, re­trieval dates, iden­ti­fied legal de­pen­den­cies, and sep­a­ra­tion of gen­er­at­ed aids from source text.

Why links fall short. The dis­trict court in NFPA v. UpCodes an­swered the access ar­gu­ment in one sen­tence: the pub­lish­er “could have simply linked its users to NFPA’s Free Access.”⁵² A link lets a reader view the text under the host’s terms. The reader cannot pre­serve an as­signed passage, share it law­ful­ly with a client, or count on con­tin­ued access if the service changes. FAF permits links to its home­page while re­strict­ing links to in­di­vid­ual pro­vi­sions, and li­cens­es the viewer for per­son­al use only. A better viewing room is still a viewing room, and Veeck refused to reduce public access to that minimum. The viewer’s terms also un­der­mine its notice func­tion, because or­ga­ni­za­tions learn their duties through the pro­fes­sion­al inquiry the grant ex­cludes. NFPA’s second finding, that the pub­lish­er copied beyond the adopted rules, is a scope ob­jec­tion that the content bound­ary above answers.

Nature of the work. The Cod­i­fi­ca­tion is pub­lished, tech­ni­cal, and di­rect­ed toward con­sis­tent ac­count­ing treat­ment. The stan­dards cases give sub­stan­tial weight to that func­tion­al char­ac­ter and legal role.⁵³ The orig­i­nal judg­ment in­volved in or­ga­niz­ing the stan­dards is what makes access to the whole frame­work nec­es­sary: a de­f­i­n­i­tion’s re­la­tion­ship to an ex­cep­tion can de­ter­mine an outcome.

Amount. Camp­bell asks whether the amount taken is rea­son­able in re­la­tion to the purpose.⁵⁴ Com­plete­ness is the point, not an excess to be excused. A repos­i­to­ry serves readers with dif­fer­ent trans­ac­tions and re­port­ing dates and must let them de­ter­mine which rules apply. The D.C. Circuit’s whole-stan­dard rea­son­ing and the Third Circuit’s foot­note 9, under which “[t]he scope of the ref­er­ence con­trols the extent of in­cor­po­ra­tion,” supply the lim­it­ing rule: rules that de­ter­mine whether fi­nan­cial state­ments conform belong to the adopted frame­work; texts that merely explain, crit­i­cize, or sell ser­vices around it do not enter by prox­im­i­ty.

Market effect. Li­cens­ing re­ceipts are ev­i­dence of a market, not a veto over the use being as­sessed. FAF’s li­cens­ing revenue sur­vived the 2023 viewing change, and un­re­strict­ed re­pub­li­ca­tion is a larger step. Both ap­pel­late courts treated the fourth factor as equiv­o­cal rather than de­clar­ing that a public-serving pub­lish­er causes no harm, and their fa­vor­able market analy­ses con­cerned su­per­seded edi­tions. A current public ASC edition could replace a current li­censed copy, so the sub­sti­tu­tion risk here is greater. The current-edition claim faces a harder market case than the stan­dards prece­dents while resting on a more im­me­di­ate legal-in­for­ma­tion need. Google v. Oracle and the D.C. Circuit’s de­ci­sion support asking what the public would lose through ex­clu­sion as well as what the pub­lish­er could lose through copying.⁵⁵ FAF also con­trols the supply of the rule­book itself: every other service carries the ASC under FAF’s license. That is a mo­nop­oly over the law, not a market for ser­vices built on in­de­pen­dent­ly avail­able law. A lost per­mis­sion fee enters the balance as one weight among others.

The article’s con­clu­sion on this record is that faith­ful pub­li­ca­tion of the current sub­stan­tive Cod­i­fi­ca­tion is fair use. It gives readers the gov­ern­ing text, its ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty rules, and its ef­fec­tive dates; a shorter se­lec­tion cannot serve the open set of en­ti­ties bound by GAAP duties. FAF may still sell updates, au­then­ti­ca­tion, re­search tools, and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices. This site adopts that con­clu­sion for the sub­stan­tive frame­work it pub­lish­es. That con­clu­sion is an ar­gu­ment from the text’s legal role, not an ex­ist­ing whole-ASC holding, and it does not claim that a court has already ap­proved this col­lec­tion.

The license and public use

Even if copy­right permits the copy, FAF can answer: you promised not to make it. The article ex­am­ines whether FAF can enforce that promise. The License Agree­ment numbers its pro­vi­sions as sec­tions; this state­ment calls them clauses.

What the license re­stricts. Clause 2 li­cens­es access “for per­son­al uses only,” tells anyone seeking “any uses other than per­son­al use” to ask FAF for per­mis­sion, and denies any right to re­pro­duce the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion “in any phys­i­cal or elec­tron­ic storage device, in­clud­ing without lim­i­ta­tion, al­ter­nate en­vi­ron­ments, flash drives, hard drives or network servers.”¹² As drafted, copying a para­graph into a slide, an email, or a mem­o­ran­dum breach­es the clause. Read lit­er­al­ly, the storage ban forbids the act it li­cens­es, because no browser can display a page without holding the text in memory and, or­di­nar­i­ly, on disk. Either the clause cannot be applied lit­er­al­ly, or its words over­state the re­stric­tion; neither reading helps FAF. Neither “per­son­al” nor “com­mer­cial” is defined. Read as written, a con­troller closing the books, an auditor testing them, and a lawyer ad­vis­ing on a dis­clo­sure all use the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion for a com­mer­cial purpose, and none uses it per­son­al­ly. The people the law binds are the people the per­son­al-use license ex­cludes. FASB staff have de­scribed access as free for “all stake­hold­ers,” in­clud­ing pre­par­ers and prac­ti­tion­ers; the op­er­a­tive grant tells those readers they may use the viewer only for per­son­al pur­pos­es.⁵⁶ Clause 3(c)(i) permits links to des­ig­nat­ed home pages and bars links to the page con­tain­ing a spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sion. Clause 3(b) re­stricts au­to­mat­ed ex­trac­tion and any use “in con­nec­tion with” ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, lan­guage that reaches re­trieval tools and, on its face, as­sis­tive tech­nol­o­gy. FAF re­serves the right to ter­mi­nate access without notice.⁵⁷

Who agreed and what they promised. Clause 3(a) opens its list of pro­hi­bi­tions with an ex­cep­tion for uses “ex­press­ly per­mit­ted by this Agree­ment or ap­plic­a­ble law.” Section 107 permits fair use. If faith­ful pub­li­ca­tion of the sub­stan­tive ASC qual­i­fies, the ex­cep­tion answers the clause 3(a) copying ban di­rect­ly. The storage limit in clause 2 and the machine-use limit in clause 3(b) do not repeat that ex­cep­tion, though clause 10(a) states FAF’s in­ten­tion that the Agree­ment not violate ap­plic­a­ble law.⁵⁷ A reader of this edition has made no promise to FAF by re­ceiv­ing it. The pub­lish­er who ac­quired the source text faces the real con­tract ques­tion, and the ac­qui­si­tion record iden­ti­fies the party and the terms.

Pre­emp­tion. Section 301 dis­places state-law rights equiv­a­lent to copy­right’s ex­clu­sive rights. The Second Circuit asks what the con­tract claim would protect: in Uni­ver­sal In­stru­ments a promise that gave the owner the same control as copy­right was pre­empt­ed, and in ML Genius website terms barring copying and dis­tri­b­u­tion of online content did not survive merely because of assent. Forest Park pre­served a claim for payment because payment adds a duty dis­tinct from the right to stop copying.⁵⁸ ProCD and Bowers remain the prin­ci­pal ob­sta­cles, and FAF’s forum clause lets it sue where assent carries greater force.⁵⁹ The ASC strains ProCD’s di­vi­sion between buyer and stranger, because FAF is the sole source and a pub­lish­er needs a source copy. A ban on re­pub­li­ca­tion tracks copy­right’s copying right; a promise to pay for a service, keep in­for­ma­tion con­fi­den­tial, or respect au­then­ti­cat­ed access pro­tects a dif­fer­ent in­ter­est. Neither route has been decided for the ASC.

Misuse. Laser­comb barred in­fringe­ment relief where a license reached beyond the owner’s soft­ware to sup­press in­de­pen­dent com­pet­ing work, without re­quir­ing an an­titrust vi­o­la­tion.⁶⁰ FAF’s linking clause can sep­a­rate crit­i­cism or in­struc­tion from the exact pro­vi­sion a reader needs to check, and its ar­ti­fi­cial-in­tel­li­gence clause can reach in­de­pen­dent tools for finding and ex­plain­ing manda­to­ry rules. Video Pipeline rec­og­nized that using copy­right to sup­press crit­i­cism can con­flict with copy­right policy but re­quired ev­i­dence that access was sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­paired.⁶¹ The strongest misuse claim would arise if FAF invoked copy­right to sup­press source links or in­de­pen­dent tools for nav­i­gat­ing the rules; its force depends on the re­straint FAF ac­tu­al­ly applies.

Ob­tain­ing the text. A right to re­pro­duce the rule­book does not au­tho­rize entry into re­strict­ed parts of FAF’s system or by­pass­ing a tech­no­log­i­cal access control. Van Buren dis­tin­guish­es per­mit­ted in­for­ma­tion from areas off limits to the user; hiQ sup­ports access to public in­for­ma­tion; section 1201 sep­a­rate­ly reg­u­lates cir­cum­ven­tion.⁶² These dis­tinc­tions support lawful ac­qui­si­tion and re­spon­si­ble de­liv­ery without letting access-method dis­putes sub­sti­tute for the copy­right analy­sis. This site’s edition was drawn from FAF’s public viewer, and its prove­nance record is pub­lished.

Reme­dies. If copy­right permits pub­li­ca­tion, FAF has no in­fringe­ment claim for that act and cannot claim statu­to­ry damages or fee shift­ing for it. It can seek con­tract reme­dies against a party who broke an en­force­able promise. Clause 10(b) recites that breach war­rants an in­junc­tion, but Baker’s Aid holds that courts decide that for them­selves.⁶³ A free license cannot supply copy­right’s reme­dies by calling lawful pub­li­ca­tion a breach.

Se­cur­ing durable access

A suc­cess­ful defense in one dispute is not a de­pend­able source. The article iden­ti­fies what public in­sti­tu­tions and FAF can do.

Formal in­cor­po­ra­tion by ref­er­ence makes iden­ti­fied outside text legally op­er­a­tive when 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(1) and 1 C.F.R. part 51 are sat­is­fied, and it fixes an ap­proved edition. Part 51 re­quires a pub­li­ca­tion that is “rea­son­ably avail­able to and usable by the class of persons af­fect­ed,” and the Office of the Federal Reg­is­ter’s hand­book states that “[r]ead-only access, on its own, may not meet the rea­son­ably avail­able re­quire­ment” because those who must comply “may need full access to an online version or their own copy of the ma­te­r­i­al.”⁶⁴ A per­son­al-use viewer whose grant ex­cludes the pro­fes­sion­al inquiry through which or­ga­ni­za­tions learn their duties cannot by itself answer that avail­abil­i­ty inquiry, and con­sti­tu­tion­al fair notice raises the same ques­tion for en­force­ment.⁶⁵ Ap­palachi­an Power held a reg­u­la­tion un­en­force­able for de­fec­tive pub­li­ca­tion because “rea­son­able avail­abil­i­ty is not a sub­sti­tute for pub­li­ca­tion.”⁶⁶ For the three Ed­u­ca­tion De­part­ment in­cor­po­ra­tions, the ap­proved edi­tions must remain avail­able; for the broader con­for­mi­ty duties, readers need the current frame­work.

Ex­ist­ing arrange­ments show that au­thor­i­ta­tive text can be sep­a­rat­ed from ser­vices. The Eu­ro­pean Union and India publish the ac­count­ing text along­side the legal command, and the Court of Justice of the Eu­ro­pean Union found an over­rid­ing public in­ter­est in dis­clos­ing har­mo­nized tech­ni­cal stan­dards because their legal effects made them part of EU law.⁶⁷ Public access must cover the com­plete current sub­stan­tive Cod­i­fi­ca­tion, permit pro­fes­sion­al use, pre­serve history through dated re­leas­es and visible cor­rec­tions, and support human and machine reading. FAF could grant such a license vol­un­tar­i­ly and still charge for tools and support. The SEC, which en­forces GAAP con­for­mi­ty against the readers the per­son­al-use grant ex­cludes, should ask in its section 7219(j) review whether FAF’s free channel can serve as notice of the rules the Com­mis­sion en­forces, and should publish a rea­soned account of how it as­sess­es li­cens­ing de­pen­dence.¹⁵ Con­gress could define covered stan­dards, per­mit­ted uses, and his­tor­i­cal ver­sions, and fund de­liv­ery; the pending Pro Codes Act bills would pre­serve copy­right through read-only display and do not supply the rights readers need.⁶⁸ Until then, a pub­lish­er can defend the edition it made, or seek a de­c­la­ra­tion on a con­crete record under Med­Im­mune.⁶⁹

A public edition must let a reader tell what rule gov­erned and when. The pub­lish­er should iden­ti­fy its source and release date, pre­serve notices, sep­a­rate ASC text from its own ex­pla­na­tion, keep prior ver­sions and cor­rec­tions visible, and make only the ac­cu­ra­cy claims it has checked. ICC v. UpCodes shows that un­sup­port­ed as­sur­ances about a legal-text service can support a false-ad­ver­tis­ing claim.⁷⁰

Com­mit­ments that ac­com­pa­ny this pub­li­ca­tion

The fol­low­ing com­mit­ments are made as part of the record of this pub­li­ca­tion, and they track the re­quire­ments the article sets for any public edition:

1. Free and non­com­mer­cial. The edition will remain free of charge. No fee, sub­scrip­tion, ad­ver­tis­ing, or sale of data will be at­tached to access to the text.
2. Faith­ful and at­trib­uted. Source text is at­trib­uted and pre­sent­ed with of­fi­cial ci­ta­tions. Faith­ful re­pro­duc­tion is the goal; re­port­ed ex­trac­tion errors will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed and cor­rect­ed. Gen­er­at­ed study aids remain labeled and do not replace au­thor­i­ta­tive sources.
3. Dated and trans­par­ent. Re­trieval dates and prove­nance will remain visible. A snap­shot will not be rep­re­sent­ed as a guar­an­tee of current ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty. Any refresh must pre­serve clear version and pending-change in­for­ma­tion, and prior ver­sions and cor­rec­tions will remain visible.
4. Ex­plic­it about scope. The sub­stan­tive frame­work is the pub­li­ca­tion object. Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Updates, il­lus­tra­tions, and PDFs are pre­sent­ed as ac­com­pa­ny­ing ma­te­r­i­al, and the in­ven­to­ry is not a de­ter­mi­na­tion that every file is ef­fec­tive law.
5. Open to di­a­logue. Re­quests for cor­rec­tion, and any com­mu­ni­ca­tion from FASB or FAF, will receive a prompt, good-faith re­sponse.

Con­clu­sion

Federal law does more than mention GAAP in passing. It ref­er­ences GAAP, FASB, or the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion in hun­dreds of pro­vi­sions across the U.S. Code and the CFR, and three Ed­u­ca­tion De­part­ment rules for­mal­ly in­cor­po­rate iden­ti­fied ASC ma­te­r­i­al. Scope rules, ex­cep­tions, and ef­fec­tive dates de­ter­mine which pro­vi­sions govern a given report, so a reader needs the frame­work before knowing which answer it gives. FAF’s free viewer serves a nar­row­er purpose than that work: its license grants per­son­al, non­com­mer­cial use, while con­trollers prepare re­quired state­ments, au­di­tors test them, and ad­vis­ers explain them. A grant that ex­cludes the pro­fes­sion­al inquiry through which or­ga­ni­za­tions iden­ti­fy their duties cannot by itself es­tab­lish ad­e­quate access to those rules.

Faith­ful pub­li­ca­tion of the com­plete current sub­stan­tive ASC serves the public-law purpose rec­og­nized in the stan­dards cases, and fair use permits the current edition in full. The pub­lish­er’s ac­qui­si­tion method and any ac­cept­ed promise still affect who FAF can sue under con­tract. They do not make the per­son­al-use viewer ad­e­quate for pro­fes­sion­al com­pli­ance. The teacher should be able to put the rule on a slide. The adviser should be able to link to the para­graph behind an opinion. The auditor should be able to keep the version used for a past report. This site exists to make those or­di­nary uses pos­si­ble for stu­dents and the public, and Closing the GAAP sets out the full ar­gu­ment for why the law permits it.¹

Footnotes

1. Michael J. Bom­mar­i­to II, Closing the GAAP: Copy­right, Fair Use, and Public Access to FASB’s Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Cod­i­fi­ca­tion (working paper, Sept. 14, 2026), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7457318. Section ref­er­ences in this state­ment are to that article. ↩ ↩²

2. Closing the GAAP, Section 1 and Ap­pen­dix A (Sep­tem­ber 11, 2026 col­lec­tion from the eCFR and govinfo search ser­vices; 785 dis­tinct CFR section or ap­pen­dix ci­ta­tions across 39 titles, 83 U.S. Code section ci­ta­tions across 16 titles, 76 reg­u­la­to­ry ci­ta­tions ex­press­ly naming FASB or the ASC). The statu­to­ry col­lec­tion ex­cludes Title 26. The three formal in­cor­po­ra­tions are 34 C.F.R. §§ 668.23(i), 668.172(e), and 668.175(i). The se­lect­ed pro­vi­sions in the table are those in the article’s Table 1; Ap­pen­dix A sup­plies a larger set with scope notes. ↩ ↩²

3. 12 U.S.C. § 1782(a)(6)(C); 12 C.F.R. § 702.2 (defin­ing GAAP as the prin­ci­ples “set forth in the Fi­nan­cial Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Board’s (FASB) Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Cod­i­fi­ca­tion (ASC)”); Closing the GAAP, Section 1. ↩

4. 15 U.S.C. § 7219(c)(1), (e), (g), (j) (manda­to­ry support fees al­lo­cat­ed by market cap­i­tal­iza­tion; re­ceipts are not public monies; ad­di­tion­al revenue per­mit­ted subject to the Com­mis­sion’s in­de­pen­dence judg­ment); SEC, Frame­work for En­hanc­ing the Quality of Fi­nan­cial In­for­ma­tion Through Im­prove­ment of Over­sight of the Au­dit­ing Process, 67 Fed. Reg. 44964, 44979–80 (July 5, 2002) (pro­posed rule); Closing the GAAP, Section 2.2 (eco­nom­ic in­ci­dence of the as­sess­ment). ↩ ↩²

5. FASB, Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Cod­i­fi­ca­tion, https://asc.fasb.org/ (source re­trieval Sept. 9–10, 2026 UTC); edition prove­nance, https://asc.understandingaccounting.org/provenance.json. ↩

6. Closing the GAAP, Section 3.3; FASB State­ment No. 168 (June 2009) (Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Updates are not au­thor­i­ta­tive in their own right); SEC Release No. 33-9062A (SEC ma­te­r­i­al re­pro­duced in the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion derives its au­thor­i­ty from the Com­mis­sion’s own sources); 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105(a). ↩

7. 15 U.S.C. § 77s(b) (Se­cu­ri­ties Act § 19(b)), added by Sar­banes-Oxley Act of 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-204, § 108(a), 116 Stat. 745, 768; 15 U.S.C. § 7218(c). ↩

8. SEC, Com­mis­sion State­ment of Policy Reaf­firm­ing the Status of the FASB as a Des­ig­nat­ed Private-Sector Stan­dard Setter, Release No. 33-8221, 68 Fed. Reg. 23333 (May 1, 2003), Summary and Parts I, III, https://www.sec.gov/rules/policy/33-8221.htm (de­scrib­ing the 1973 recog­ni­tion in Ac­count­ing Series Release No. 150). ↩

9. Fi­nan­cial Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Board, Fi­nan­cial State­ments for the Years Ended De­cem­ber 31, 2025 and 2024, at 5, 7–8, https://storage.accountingfoundation.org/FASB%20Audited%20Financial%20Statements%202025%20and%202024.pdf (ac­count­ing support fees of $32,829,000, equal to total revenue, for 2025; FAF al­lo­ca­tions and reserve use dis­closed). ↩

10. FASB ASC 105-10-05-1 through 105-10-05-4, https://asc.understandingaccounting.org/asc/105/10/; FASB State­ment No. 168, The FASB Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Cod­i­fi­ca­tion and the Hi­er­ar­chy of Gen­er­al­ly Ac­cept­ed Ac­count­ing Prin­ci­ples (June 2009), Summary and ¶ 6, https://storage.fasb.org/fas168.pdf. ↩

11. SEC, Com­mis­sion Guid­ance Re­gard­ing the Fi­nan­cial Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Board’s Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Cod­i­fi­ca­tion, Release Nos. 33-9062A, 34-60519A, FR-80A, 74 Fed. Reg. 42772 (Aug. 25, 2009), https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/interp/2009/33-9062a.pdf. ↩

12. Fi­nan­cial Ac­count­ing Foun­da­tion, License Agree­ment (updated as of 10.10.24), pre­sent­ed for ac­cep­tance on entry to the Cod­i­fi­ca­tion at https://asc.fasb.org/ (re­trieved Sept. 10, 2026; copy on file with the author), pre­am­ble and § 2; § 3(a)(j) (no use “for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es”); § 3(b) (use per­mit­ted only by “in­di­vid­ual users engaged in an active user session for per­son­al use”); Fi­nan­cial Ac­count­ing Foun­da­tion, Fi­nan­cial Ac­count­ing Foun­da­tion Debuts En­hanced Free Access to Online Ac­count­ing Stan­dards Cod­i­fi­ca­tion and Gov­ern­men­tal Ac­count­ing Re­search System (Feb. 27, 2023). ↩ ↩²

13. Fi­nan­cial Ac­count­ing Foun­da­tion, Fi­nan­cial State­ments for the Years Ended De­cem­ber 31, 2025 and 2024, at 11, https://storage.accountingfoundation.org/FAF%20Audited%20Financial%20Statements%202025%20and%202024.pdf; Fi­nan­cial Ac­count­ing Foun­da­tion, Fi­nan­cial State­ments for the Years Ended De­cem­ber 31, 2023 and 2022, at 7. ↩

14. Closing the GAAP, Sec­tions 2.4 and 5.2 (Basic View history; Sep­tem­ber 13, 2026 search ob­ser­va­tions; saved viewer pages with user scaling dis­abled and no reflow at phone width without JavaScript); U.S. De­part­ment of Justice, Guid­ance on Web Ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and the ADA (Mar. 18, 2022), https://www.ada.gov/resources/web-guidance/; 28 C.F.R. § 36.303(b)(2). ↩

15. SEC, Order Re­gard­ing Review of FASB Ac­count­ing Support Fee for 2026 Under Section 109 of the Sar­banes-Oxley Act of 2002, Release Nos. 33-11410, 34-104943, 91 Fed. Reg. 12035 (Mar. 11, 2026); 15 U.S.C. § 7219(j); Closing the GAAP, Sec­tions 2.5 and 6.7. ↩ ↩²

16. 15 U.S.C. § 78m(a), (b)(2)(A)–(B); 15 U.S.C. § 78o(d); 17 C.F.R. §§ 240.13a-1, 240.15d-1. ↩

17. 17 C.F.R. § 210.4-01(a)(1)–(2). ↩

18. 17 C.F.R. § 210.8-01(a) (smaller re­port­ing com­pa­nies); 17 C.F.R. § 240.17a-5(d)(2)(i) (brokers and dealers). ↩

19. Indiana Public Re­tire­ment System v. SAIC, Inc., 818 F.3d 85, 92–94 (2d Cir. 2016). ↩

20. Ohio Admin. Code 4701-9-04(A)–(D), (G); AICPA, Code of Pro­fes­sion­al Conduct §§ 1.320.001, 1.320.020 (July 2026). ↩

21. 26 U.S.C. § 451(b)(1)–(4); 26 U.S.C. § 56A(a)–(c). ↩

22. Shalala v. Guernsey Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal, 514 U.S. 87, 90, 95–96, 101 (1995). ↩

23. Thor Power Tool Co. v. Com­mis­sion­er, 439 U.S. 522, 542–43 (1979); United States v. Simon, 425 F.2d 796, 805–06 (2d Cir. 1969); Closing the GAAP, Sec­tions 3.4 and 3.6. ↩

24. Georgia v. Public.Re­source.Org, Inc., 590 U.S. 255, 265 (2020) (quoting Banks v. Man­ches­ter, 128 U.S. 244, 253 (1888), and Nash v. Lathrop, 6 N.E. 559, 560 (Mass. 1886)). ↩

25. Georgia, 590 U.S. at 265–70, 272, 275. ↩

26. Banks v. Man­ches­ter, 128 U.S. 244, 253 (1888); Build­ing Of­fi­cials & Code Ad­min­is­tra­tors In­ter­na­tion­al, Inc. v. Code Tech­nol­o­gy, Inc., 628 F.2d 730, 734–36 (1st Cir. 1980); Howell v. Miller, 91 F. 129, 137–38 (6th Cir. 1898); see also County of Suffolk v. First Amer­i­can Real Estate So­lu­tions, 261 F.3d 179, 193–95 (2d Cir. 2001). ↩

27. Veeck v. South­ern Build­ing Code Con­gress In­ter­na­tion­al, Inc., 293 F.3d 791, 799 (5th Cir. 2002) (en banc). ↩

28. Veeck, 293 F.3d at 800–05 (merger; dis­tin­guish­ing ex­trin­sic ref­er­ences and warning against mixing enacted and un­adopt­ed text). ↩

29. Cana­di­an Stan­dards Ass’n v. P.S. Knight Co., 112 F.4th 298, 303–06 & 307 n.9 (5th Cir. 2024), cert. denied, No. 24-537 (U.S. Jan. 21, 2025). ↩

30. Amer­i­can Society for Testing & Ma­te­ri­als v. Public.Re­source.Org, Inc., 82 F.4th 1262, 1265, 1268–72 (D.C. Cir. 2023); see also 896 F.3d 437, 448–51 (D.C. Cir. 2018). ↩

31. ASTM v. Public.Re­source.Org, 82 F.4th at 1268. ↩

32. ASTM v. Public.Re­source.Org, 82 F.4th at 1269. ↩

33. ASTM v. Public.Re­source.Org, 82 F.4th at 1270–72. ↩

34. Amer­i­can Society for Testing & Ma­te­ri­als v. UpCodes Inc., No. 24-2965 (3d Cir. Apr. 7, 2026) (prece­den­tial), https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/242965p.pdf, aff’g 752 F. Supp. 3d 480 (E.D. Pa. 2024). ↩

35. ASTM v. UpCodes, slip op. at 14 (quoting ASTM, 82 F.4th at 1268). ↩

36. ASTM v. UpCodes, slip op. at 15–16 (dis­tin­guish­ing Ha­chette Book Group, Inc. v. In­ter­net Archive, 115 F.4th 163 (2d Cir. 2024)). ↩

37. ASTM v. UpCodes, slip op. at 4 n.1. ↩

38. ASTM v. UpCodes, slip op. at 24–25 & n.9. ↩

39. ASTM v. UpCodes, slip op. at 25–26. ↩

40. ASTM v. UpCodes, slip op. at 20. ↩

41. ASTM v. UpCodes, slip op. at 30–31 & n.13; limits at 4–7, 24–25. ↩

42. CCC In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices, Inc. v. Maclean Hunter Market Reports, Inc., 44 F.3d 61, 72–74 (2d Cir. 1994). ↩

43. Prac­tice Man­age­ment In­for­ma­tion Corp. v. Amer­i­can Medical Ass’n, 121 F.3d 516, 517–21 (9th Cir. 1997), amended, 133 F.3d 1140 (9th Cir. 1998). ↩

44. Amer­i­can Dental As­so­ci­a­tion v. Delta Dental Plans As­so­ci­a­tion, 126 F.3d 977, 978–81 (7th Cir. 1997). ↩

45. Feist Pub­li­ca­tions, Inc. v. Rural Tele­phone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340, 348–49 (1991); Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99, 104–05 (1879); Closing the GAAP, Section 4.4 (arrange­ment as the ad­dress­ing system of the adopted frame­work). ↩

46. Texas As­so­ci­a­tion of School Boards, Inc. v. Texans for Ex­cel­lence in Ed­u­ca­tion, Inc., No. 1:25-cv-01863-DH, ECF No. 44, at 5–18, 20–25 (W.D. Tex. May 13, 2026) (Howell, M.J.). ↩

47. Thomson Reuters En­ter­prise Centre GmbH v. ROSS In­tel­li­gence Inc., No. 1:20-cv-613-SB, slip op. at 15–19, 22–23 (D. Del. Feb. 11, 2025) (Bibas, J., sitting by des­ig­na­tion). ↩

48. Order re­quest­ing sup­ple­men­tal brief­ing on ASTM v. UpCodes, Thomson Reuters v. ROSS In­tel­li­gence, No. 25-2153 (3d Cir. Apr. 27, 2026); oral ar­gu­ment held June 11, 2026. ↩

49. 17 U.S.C. § 107. ↩

50. Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 219–20 (2003). ↩

51. Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Gold­smith, 598 U.S. 508, 525–32, 542–47 (2023); Camp­bell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569, 577–79 (1994); Closing the GAAP, Section 4.5. ↩

52. Na­tion­al Fire Pro­tec­tion Ass’n v. UpCodes, Inc., 753 F. Supp. 3d 933, No. 2:21-cv-05262, ECF No. 232, at 32–35, 42 (C.D. Cal. 2024) (settled and dis­missed Mar. 21, 2025); ASTM v. UpCodes, slip op. at 31 n.13; ASTM, 82 F.4th at 1270; Closing the GAAP, Section 4.6. ↩

53. ASTM v. UpCodes, slip op. at 22–23; ASTM, 82 F.4th at 1268; 17 U.S.C. § 107(2). ↩

54. Camp­bell, 510 U.S. at 586–87; 17 U.S.C. § 107(3); ASTM, 82 F.4th at 1269; ASTM v. UpCodes, slip op. at 24–26. ↩

55. 17 U.S.C. § 107(4); Camp­bell, 510 U.S. at 590–92; Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., 593 U.S. 1, 35–36 (2021); ASTM, 82 F.4th at 1271–72; ASTM v. UpCodes, slip op. at 27–33; Closing the GAAP, Section 4.9. ↩

56. FASB Staff, 2024 Agenda Con­sul­ta­tion: Content De­vel­op­ment Out­reach, PCC public meeting mem­o­ran­dum, Topic 6, at 1, 3 (Sept. 24, 2024), https://storage.fasb.org/PCC-Topic%206%20AgendaConsultation-20240924.pdf; FASB, Rules of Pro­ce­dure (amended and re­stat­ed through Feb­ru­ary 2025) (per­mit­ting a limited number of copies for in­ter­nal or per­son­al use). ↩

57. Fi­nan­cial Ac­count­ing Foun­da­tion, License Agree­ment (Oct. 10, 2024), §§ 2, 3(a) (opening qual­i­fi­ca­tion: “Except as ex­press­ly per­mit­ted by this Agree­ment or ap­plic­a­ble law”), 3(b), 3(c)(i), 4, 6(a), 10(a)–(b); Closing the GAAP, Sec­tions 5.1–5.3. ↩ ↩²

58. 17 U.S.C. § 301; Uni­ver­sal In­stru­ments Corp. v. Micro Systems En­gi­neer­ing, Inc., 924 F.3d 32, 48–49 (2d Cir. 2019); ML Genius Hold­ings LLC v. Google LLC, No. 20-3113, 2022 WL 710744, slip op. at 6–8 (2d Cir. Mar. 10, 2022) (summary order); Forest Park Pic­tures v. Uni­ver­sal Tele­vi­sion Network, Inc., 683 F.3d 424, 429–33 (2d Cir. 2012). ↩

59. ProCD, Inc. v. Zei­den­berg, 86 F.3d 1447, 1454–55 (7th Cir. 1996); Bowers v. Baystate Tech­nolo­gies, Inc., 320 F.3d 1317, 1324–26 (Fed. Cir. 2003); Closing the GAAP, Section 5.4. ↩

60. Laser­comb America, Inc. v. Reynolds, 911 F.2d 970, 978–79 (4th Cir. 1990); see also As­sess­ment Tech­nolo­gies of WI, LLC v. WIRE­da­ta, Inc., 350 F.3d 640, 644–47 (7th Cir. 2003). ↩

61. Video Pipeline, Inc. v. Buena Vista Home En­ter­tain­ment, Inc., 342 F.3d 191, 204–06 (3d Cir. 2003); Closing the GAAP, Section 5.5. ↩

62. Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. 374, 378, 390 n.8 (2021); hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp., No. 17-16783, slip op. at 36–37 (9th Cir. Apr. 18, 2022); 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1), (3); Cham­ber­lain Group, Inc. v. Skylink Tech­nolo­gies, Inc., 381 F.3d 1178, 1202–04 (Fed. Cir. 2004); MDY In­dus­tries, LLC v. Bliz­zard En­ter­tain­ment, Inc., 629 F.3d 928, 950–52 (9th Cir. 2010); Closing the GAAP, Section 5.6. ↩

63. Baker’s Aid v. Huss­mann Food­ser­vice Co., 830 F.2d 13, 16 (2d Cir. 1987); Georgia, 590 U.S. at 275; Closing the GAAP, Section 5.7. ↩

64. 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(1); 1 C.F.R. §§ 51.1(f), 51.3(b), 51.5(b), 51.7(a)(3), 51.9(b)(4); Office of the Federal Reg­is­ter, In­cor­po­ra­tion by Ref­er­ence Hand­book at 9–10, §§ III.E–G (June 2023), https://www.archives.gov/files/federal-register/write/handbook/ibr.pdf; Office of the Federal Reg­is­ter, In­cor­po­ra­tion by Ref­er­ence, 79 Fed. Reg. 66267, 66268 (Nov. 7, 2014) (de­clin­ing to require free online avail­abil­i­ty of all in­cor­po­rat­ed ma­te­r­i­al). ↩

65. FCC v. Fox Tele­vi­sion Sta­tions, Inc., 567 U.S. 239, 253–55 (2012); Lambert v. Cal­i­for­nia, 355 U.S. 225, 228–30 (1957); Closing the GAAP, Sec­tions 6.1–6.2. ↩

66. Ap­palachi­an Power Co. v. Train, 566 F.2d 451, 455–57 (4th Cir. 1977); see also Hung Hy Nguyen v. United States, 824 F.2d 697, 699–702 (9th Cir. 1987). ↩

67. Reg­u­la­tion (EC) No 1606/2002; Com­mis­sion Reg­u­la­tion (EC) No 1126/2008; Com­pa­nies (Indian Ac­count­ing Stan­dards) Rules, 2015, G.S.R. 111(E), rules 3–4 and An­nex­ure; Public.Re­source.Org Inc. and Right to Know CLG v. Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion, Case C-588/21 P, ECLI:EU:C:2024:201, ¶¶ 85–90 (C.J.E.U. Mar. 5, 2024) (Grand Chamber); Closing the GAAP, Sec­tions 6.4–6.6. ↩

68. Pro Codes Act, H.R. 4072, 119th Cong. (2025); Pro Codes Act of 2026, S. 4145, 119th Cong. (2026); Ryan Jarratt, An Updated Pro Codes Act: En­hanc­ing Public Access to Pri­vate­ly Copy­right­ed Laws, 125 Colum. L. Rev. 1735, 1762–63, 1768–71 (2025); Closing the GAAP, Section 6.8. ↩

69. 28 U.S.C. § 2201; Med­Im­mune, Inc. v. Genen­tech, Inc., 549 U.S. 118, 127, 136–37 (2007); Closing the GAAP, Section 6.9. ↩

70. In­ter­na­tion­al Code Council, Inc. v. UpCodes Inc., 43 F.4th 46, 57–64 (2d Cir. 2022); Closing the GAAP, Section 6.10. ↩