The State of Georgia cannot hold a copyright of the State’s only official code, O.S.G.A., without running afoul of the First Amendment. Although an individual could copyright annotated version of the document, the State responsible for creating and annually adopting the legislature could not maintain copyright in its official annotated state code (Struver, 2020). As any case that involves a foreign government, patent, or copyright infringement, is heard by the federal courts, the following case was ruled by the United States Supreme Court (Krutz, 2019).
The Respondent, Public.Resource.org, in the face of Carl Malamud, purchased a one thousand dollars priced186-volume hard copy of the O.C.G.A. and published the digital copy contents on the website. In response, the State of Georgia sued Malamud for copyright infringement. It was noted by Balganesh (2020) how the Supreme Court resurrected a nineteenth-century copyright doctrine and applied it to statutory annotations prepared by a legislative agency.
On April 27, 2020, in a 5-to-4 decision, The Court ruled that Georgia does not have copyright over O.C.G.A. It was noted that official works of the Georgia legislature could not be copyrighted as that could potentially deprive citizens of knowledge of those laws and regulations. The Court’s Decision states that obtaining the copyright of O.C.G.A. could deprive citizens of understanding of rules and regulations. However, as Struver (2020) pointed out, the Court’s deconstitutionalization of the government edicts doctrine may strengthen private ownership of the law and could potentially have dangerous implications for access and the rule of law.
I deeply agree with the decision of the Court. It was noted already that the cost of the copy of the O.C.G.A. equals almost a thousand dollars. Still, it was already available for Georgia citizens with a discount of around 600 dollars. Although overall legislatures should be open for anyone to be known and followed, the price of four hundred dollars per printed edition justified the work of the officers and employees of the United States Government.
References
Balganesh, S. (2020). Long live the common law of copyright: Georgia v. Public.Resource. Inc. and the debate over the judicial role in copyright. Columbia Law Review Forum, 121. Web.
Krutz, G. (2019). American Government 2e. OpenStax, Rice University.
Struver, Z. (2020). The deconstitutionalization of the government edicts doctrine in Georgia v. Public.Resource. Inc. Web.