Posts Tagged: "annotated codes"

On December 2, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in the matter of Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc. The issue on appeal was on whether annotations to the Official Code of the State of Georgia, which were prepared by Mathew Bender & Co under the supervision of Georgia’s Code Revision Commission, which was itself created by Georgia’s General Assembly, were capable of copyright protection, or whether they were an integral part of the laws of the State of Georgia, which, like all legislation, is part of the public domain and cannot be copyrighted. The outcome of this decision will affect legal publishing schemes in a number of states which, similar to Georgia, contract the work of preparing annotations to private sector companies, which then monetize those copyrights through a license fee structure. Indeed, concern for states’ publishing schemes led to the Solicitor General’s office and various other states joining in on the side of petitioner, the State of Georgia, who is seeking to establish that the annotations are subject to copyright. The case also presents a fascinating, almost philosophical discussion on the nature of annotations and the legal or persuasive force they should be afforded.