Revisiting the government edicts doctrine for the first time in
more than a century, the U.S. Supreme Court in Georgia v.
Public.Resource.Org, Inc., No. 18-1150, 590 U.S. ___ (2020),
split 5-4 to hold that annotations to state laws, "authored by
an arm of the legislature in the course of its official
duties," are ineligible for copyright protection.
The Official Code of Georgia Annotated ("OCGA"), the
state's official statutory code, is assembled by the Code
Revision Commission. The Commission was established by the Georgia
Legislature and is charged with selecting and supervising a
publisher for the OCGA. The Commission contracted with a publishing
company to draft the annotations, with the copyright in the OCGA
vesting in the state. Pursuant to its agreement with the
Commission, the publishing company had exclusive rights to publish
and sell the OCGA, as long as it limited the price and made an
unannotated version of the code available online for
