The Center for Democracy & Technology and the Cato Institute filed an amicus brief in the case Georgia v. Public.Resource.org. In this case, the Supreme Court will consider whether annotations included in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (OCGA) are “edicts of government” and therefore not subject to copyright. CDT also filed in the lower court and still believes the answer to this question is “yes” because the OCGA bears the state’s designation as the only authoritative source of law. This might seem obvious—the law should not be and need not be protected by copyright—but it is the inclusion of annotations that creates the legal uncertainty here.
Thank you to Marta Belcher, Monica Ortel, and James Rickard at Ropes & Gray for representing CDT on this brief.
