Supreme Court Holds That Annotated State Codes Are Unprotectable By Copyright

On Monday, in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that, under the "government edicts doctrine," just as judges cannot claim copyright rights in their opinions, legislatures cannot claim copyright rights in state code annotations prepared on their behalf.

Justice Roberts authored the 5-4 opinion of the Court, with Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh joining the majority opinion, and Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Thomas, and Alito dissenting.

The "animating principle behind" the decision, Justice Roberts wrote, "is that no one can own the law." (Op. at 2.)

The Official Code of Georgia Annotated (OCGA)—the official version of Georgia state law—includes annotations prepared by LexisNexis Group pursuant to a work-for-hire agreement between Lexis and Georgia's Code Revision Commission. Georgia's legislature has tasked the Commission with consolidating Georgia's law into a single code, and the Commission is made