Whether the annotations contained in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (OCGA), authored by the Georgia General Assembly and made an inextricable part of the official codification of Georgia’s laws, may be copyrighted by the State of Georgia. No valid copyright interest can be asserted in any part of the OCGA.
The general rule that legislative codifications are uncopyrightable derives from an understanding of the nature of law and the basic idea that the People, as the reservoir of all sovereignty, are the source of our law. For purposes of the Copyright Act, this means that the People are the constructive authors of those official legal promulgations of government that represent an exercise of sovereign authority. And because they are the authors, the People are the owners of these works, meaning that the works are intrinsically public domain material and, therefore, uncopyrightable.
The Official Code of Georgia Annotated (OCGA or the Code) is an annotated compilation of Georgia statutes that has been published annually since 1982. The statutory text contained in the OCGA has been “enacted and has the effect of statutes enacted by the General Assembly of Georgia.” Appearing alongside the statutory text are various annotations, consisting of history lines, repeal lines, cross references, commentaries, case notations, editor’s notes, excerpts from law review articles, summaries of opinions of the Attorney General of Georgia, summaries of advisory opinions of the State Bar, and other research references.
The Code itself makes clear that these annotations are a part of the official Code, stating that the statutory portions of the Code “shall be merged with annotations… and are published by authority of the state …and when so published are to be known and may be cited as the ‘Official Code of Georgia Annotated.’” Despite the fact that they are part of the official Code, Georgia law says that the annotations themselves do not have the force of law in the way that the statutory portions of the Code do. The annotations were initially prepared by Mathew Bender & Co., Inc., an operating division of the LexisNexis Group, (Lexis), pursuant to an agreement it entered into with the State of Georgia.
Under the terms of the agreement, Lexis is responsible for the ongoing publication and maintenance of the Code, and all editorial, publication, and distribution costs. In exchange, Lexis was given the exclusive right of publication by Georgia. But, notably, Georgia holds the copyright in the annotations in its own name. The publication agreement also specifies what types of annotations should appear alongside the statutory text, and provides detailed and specific directions as to how Lexis is to generate and arrange this content. The agreement also provides that the Code Revision Commission (the “Commission”) supervises the work of Lexis and has final editorial control over the contents of the OCGA.
The Commission is a body established by the Georgia General Assembly in 1977 that was originally tasked with undertaking the recodification of all of Georgia’s laws, a project that had not been done since 1933. The Commission is comprised of Georgia officials, including the Lieutenant Governor, four members of the Georgia Senate, the Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, four additional members of the Georgia House of Representatives, and five members appointed by the president of the State Bar of Georgia. Following its successful recodification of Georgia law and the publication of the OCGA in 1982, the Commission is now responsible for updating the OCGA and supervising Lexis’s editing and publication of the OCGA.
In addition to providing instructions to Lexis about how the annotations should be created, compiled, and arranged, the publication agreement establishes a number of other conditions governing the relationship between Lexis and the State of Georgia. First, the agreement requires that Lexis create a free, unannotated, online version of the Code for use by the general public. Second, the agreement limits the price that Lexis can charge for the OCGA. While other commercial annotations of the Georgia Code can cost as much as $2,570, the price of the OCGA is currently $404. Third, it grants Lexis the exclusive right to produce and sell print, CD-ROM, and online versions of the OCGA. Finally, it provides that the Commission shall receive royalties on the sale of CD-ROM and online versions of the OCGA, but shall not receive royalties from the sale of print volumes.
Public.Resource.Org (PRO) is a non-profit organization with a mission of improving public access to government records and primary legal materials. In 2013 PRO purchased all 186 volumes of the print version of the OCGA and its supplements, scanned them, and uploaded them to its website to be freely accessible to the public. It also placed digital copies of the OCGA onto USB drives and mailed them to various Georgia legislators. Additionally, PRO distributed copies of the OCGA to other organizations and on other websites in order to facilitate its further dissemination by other parties. On multiple occasions the Commission sent letters to PRO demanding that it cease and desist from publishing the OCGA on the grounds that publication infringes on the State of Georgia’s copyright in the work. PRO refused to comply, arguing that there was no valid copyright in the OCGA because the law cannot be copyrighted.
The Commission, acting on behalf of the Georgia General Assembly and the State of Georgia, sued PRO on July 21, 2015 in the United District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The complaint sought injunctive relief against PRO’s “widespread and unauthorized copying and distribution of the copyrighted annotations in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated through the distribution of thumb drives containing copies of the O.C.G.A. and the posting of the O.C.G.A. on various websites.” On September 14, 2015, PRO filed its answer to the complaint, acknowledging its widespread publication of the OCGA, but denying that the State of Georgia holds an enforceable copyright in the Code. PRO also asserted the defense of fair use. Finally, PRO counterclaimed seeking a declaratory judgment that “the State of Georgia has no valid copyright in any portion of the O.C.G.A. because the O.C.G.A. is in the public domain.”
Following briefing and argument, the district court granted the Commission’s motion for partial summary judgment and denied PRO’s motion. The court concluded that because the annotations in the OCGA lack the force of law, they are not public domain material. Also, it rejected PRO’s other challenges to the validity of Georgia’s copyright as well as its fair use defense. Soon thereafter, the district court entered a permanent injunction against PRO enjoining it “from all unauthorized use, including through reproduction, display, distribution, or creation of derivative works, of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (O.C.G.A.).” The injunction also ordered PRO to “remove all versions of the O.C.G.A. from its website,” and to cease any fundraising activities connected with PRO’s publication of the OCGA. The appeal followed.
Only “original works of authorship” are eligible for copyright protection. What’s more, authorship generally determines who has a possessory interest in a work. “Copyright in a work… vests initially in the author or authors of the work.” Indeed, authorship allows a person to claim copyright protection regardless of whether the work has been registered with the United States Copyright Office. In consequence, to ascertain who holds a copyright in a work, we ordinarily must ascertain the identity of the author.
The meaning of authorship takes on special significance in cases like this where we consider the copyrightability of a government edict. A long line of authority, stretching back more than 180 years, establishes that, with respect to certain governmental works, the term “author” should be construed to mean “the People,” so that the general public is treated as the owner of the work. This means that a work subject to the rule is inherently public domain material and thus not eligible for copyright protection.
Although case precedent and congressional enactments have long established the rule that government works are not copyrightable, the foundations of the rule are generally implicit and unstated. Under democratic rule, the People are sovereign, they govern themselves through their legislative and judicial representatives, and they are ultimately the source of our law. Under this arrangement, lawmakers and judges are draftsmen of the law, exercising delegated authority, and acting as servants of the People, and whatever they produce the People are the true authors.
When the legislative or judicial chords are plucked it is in fact the People’s voice that is heard. Not surprisingly, then, for purposes of copyright law, this means that the People, as the constructive authors are also the owners of the law. And in this way, any work of which the People are the constructive authors is intrinsically public domain material and is freely accessible to all so that no valid copyright can ever be held in it.
The annotations in the OCGA, while not having the force of law, are part and parcel of the law. They are so enmeshed with Georgia’s law as to be inextricable. The annotations are themselves law-like insofar as we examine who made them, how they were made, and the role they play in the legislative and jurisprudential spheres of Georgia’s public life. In consequence, they too represent a work, like the statutes themselves, that is constructively authored by the People. They are therefore uncopyrightable. The annotations are, in a powerful sense, a work created by the Georgia state legislature.
In short, the Commission exercises direct, authoritative control over the creation of the OCGA annotations at every stage of their preparation. The Commission provides initial instructions to Lexis, directly supervises Lexis’s work throughout the preparation process, and must give its final editorial assent to the annotations before they can become part of the OCGA. In this way, the Commission undeniably controls the creation of the OCGA annotations.
The question then becomes, what is the nature of the new thing created when the Georgia General Assembly explicitly chose to merge the annotations with statutory text? Here too Georgia law supplies an answer. In particular, Georgia law provides that the merged text “shall be published by authority of the state … and when so published shall be known and may be cited as the ‘Official Code of Georgia Annotated.’” Thus, the product of the merger is an official state publication, labelled and cited as the authoritative embodiment of the laws of the State of Georgia.
The statutory text, having been merged with these legislatively authored expositions on the meaning of Georgia law, must be read in pari materia with them. The annotations’ combination with the statutes means that any understanding of the statutory text arrived at without reference to the annotations is axiomatically incomplete. Because Georgia law tells us that the official codification of Georgia statutes contains not only statutory text but also annotations that have been combined and unified with the statutory text into a single edict, a full understanding of the laws of Georgia necessarily includes an understanding of the contents of the annotations. In this way, the annotations are clearly laden with legal significance. The annotations are not merely expositions on the meaning of statutes, but rather are official comments authored by the same body that also wrote the statutes.
However, it is also the case that the Georgia General Assembly voted to adopt the annotations as prepared by the Commission as an integral part of the official Code. Further, it did so through a legislative act that necessarily passed both Houses of the legislature and was signed into law by the Governor. Moreover, and significant for our purposes, the General Assembly votes each year to amend the OCGA and reaffirm its status as the official codification of Georgia’s laws.
The OCGA annotations are created by Georgia’s legislative body, which has been entrusted with exercising sovereign power on behalf of the people of Georgia. While the annotations do not carry the force of law in the way that statutes or judicial opinions do, they are expressly given legal significance so that, while not “law,” the annotations undeniably are authoritative sources on the meaning of Georgia statutes.
The legislature has stamped them “official” and has chosen to make them an integral part of the official codification of Georgia’s laws. Thus, the court has concluded that the annotations in the OCGA are attributable to the constructive authorship of the People. The resulting work is intrinsically public domain material, belonging to the People, and, as such, must be free for publication by all.
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