Cite as 906 F.3d 1229 (11th Cir. 2018)
constructive authorship of the People, these factors guide our inquiry into whether a work is law or sufficiently law-like so as to be subject to the rule in Banks.
An analysis of these factors yields the conclusion that 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.
A.
First, and of critical importance to our analysis is that the Georgia General Assembly is the driving force behind their creation. The Code Revision Commission exerts authoritative influence over the creation of the annotations and the Commission indisputably is an arm of the General Assembly. Thus, just as the uncopyrightable works in Banks were created by the Ohio Supreme Court, the annotations are, in a powerful sense, a work created by the Georgia state legislature.
While it is true that the annotations were initially prepared by a private party, in this case Lexis, it is also the case that Lexis drafts the annotations pursuant to highly detailed instructions contained in the contract it entered into with the Code Revision Commission. In particular, the publication agreement not only lists the types of materials that Lexis must include in the OCGA, but also provides punctiliously specific instructions on how these materials are to be prepared. Thus, by way of example, in addition to instructing Lexis to include annotations summarizing court decisions that are relevant to various statutory provisions in the OCGA, the publication contract tells Lexis which court decisions to include. Moreover, the contract specifies the content of these summaries, instructing Lexis to include discussion of those portions of judicial opinions that involve “direct constructions” of a statute, including “constructions concerning constitutionality, purpose, intent, and the meaning of words and phrases as well as illustrations as to what a particular provision applies and to what a particular provision does not apply.” Leaving even less to Lexis’s independent judgment, the contract also instructs Lexis what not to include in the judicial summaries, ordering Lexis’s editors to “avoid long factual annotations where they do not bear directly upon the statute involved.” Further, the agreement tells Lexis the order in which the various case annotations are to be arranged.
The annotations containing summaries of judicial opinions are not the only ones for which the publication contract provides highly specific directions. The agreement also requires Lexis to include research references in the annotations, and names the specific reference sources that must be included. Similarly, the contract directs Lexis to include annotations dealing with legislative history and specifies just how far back into a statutory provision’s history the annotations may go.
In addition to providing detailed instructions that guide the creation of the OCGA annotations, the Commission acts in a supervisory capacity as well, monitoring Lexis’s work throughout the process. The contract says that the annotations are prepared under the “direct supervision” of the Commission. The contract spells out in some detail what this supervision means. In addition to including the research references listed in the publication agreement, Lexis is required to “include any new [references]… as required by the Commission.” Sections of the agreement dealing
