Copyright Lawyers on SCOTUS Decision in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org: Expected, But Possibly Problematic

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Georgia et al. v. Public.Resource.Org., Inc. that a state code revision commission cannot claim copyright protection over annotated state code. The ruling upheld the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit’s 2018 decision in Code Revision Commission v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., which reversed-in-part, vacated-in-part and remanded a lower court’s ruling in a copyright infringement case involving an annotated version of Georgia’s official state code. Applying Supreme Court case law from the 19th Century, the Eleventh Circuit found that no valid copyright interest can be asserted in any part of the annotated state code. In affirming that holding, the High Court on Monday said that the judicially-created “edicts doctrine” precluded government officials with the power to speak with the force of the law to be considered “authors” of the works they create for copyright purposes.

The decision was not a shock, but could have serious implications going forward. Here is what some members of the copyright bar had to say.

Jeffrey Cadwell, Dorsey & Whitney

The Court’s holding is rooted in the government edicts doctrine, which states that “officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of—and therefore cannot copyright—the works they create in the course of their official duties.” The basis for this doctrine is that no one party should be able to own the law.

A key takeaway is that authorship matters. If legislators produce work product (either on their own or by virtue of a work for hire agreement that deems the legislators to be the author) when acting within their legislative capacity, then the government edicts doctrine applies, and there is no copyright protection. But if a private party produces the work product, then the government edicts doctrine does not apply, and copyright protection is available.

This is not to say that all works created by state governments are not protectable under copyright law. As the Court noted, works prepared by non-lawmaking officials employed by public universities, libraries, and tourism offices, for example, can still benefit from copyright protection.

Preston Heard and Emily Whittaker, Womble Bond Dickinson (US) LLP

The Supreme Court’s decision in Georgia v. Public.Resource.org was somewhat predictable, given the long-standing prohibition on federal bodies copyrighting legal edicts under 17 U.S.C. § 105, as well as the Eleventh Circuit’s strongly worded, unambiguous decision for the public watchdog group and against the State of Georgia. If there was a surprise, it was the Court’s 5-4 split, both in the philosophical nature of the split (as Justices Ginsburg and Thomas both dissented, with Justice Breyer joining both dissents), as well as in how close the final outcome turned out to be. The decision also puts nearly half of the states who rely on annotation-related revenue in the lurch, so it will be interesting to see how the states react and whether annotations will continue and in what form.

Jason Rosenberg, Alston & Bird

Disclosure: Rosenberg was part of a team at Alston & Bird that represented Public.Resource.Org in this case at both the district court and 11^th Circuit levels. They were not involved with the Supreme Court phase.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote a compelling rationale for the Supreme Court’s holding that the annotations in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated are government edicts and outside the reach of copyright. The approach was straightforward, as it focused on the threshold question of whether a body given legislative authority to create annotations could even be an “author” under the Copyright Act in the first place, rather than on whether the annotations themselves have the “force of law.”  Roberts’ point that a potential “fair use” defense, as some suggested could apply, would provide little comfort was particularly welcome. Copyright practitioners have long realized that the success of such a defense is notoriously unpredictable. A cause to celebrate for those seeking broader, free access to public materials, the decision is sure to cause frustration to the many states which, like Georgia, charge for access to their annotated codes.  Finally, though Justice Thomas’ dissent posits that the majority has made things more, not less, complicated, I do not believe that decision will be as difficult to apply in the real world as he suggests. Nor do I believe that states will now decide to stop creating annotated versions of their laws, even if the economic motives for Lexis (or similar providers) to do so are no longer the same.

Mitchell Stein, Sullivan & Worcester

The decision represents a significant hit to the legal publishing industry and to the general public. Publishers will no longer be able monetize their statutory annotations by being able to charge users a fee. Unless the various states step up and pay Lexis and other private companies for their work in preparing annotations, there will be no financial incentive for publishing companies to continue preparing them. The public suffers because it may soon be denied access to information that would be useful, and in some situations essential, for interpreting state law. The Court recognized that adverse consequences like these could arise from its decision, but left it to the Congress to fix the problem through legislation.