Opinion of the Court
version of the statutory text available to the public online for free. A hard copy of the complete OCGA currently retails for $412.00.
B
Public.Resource.Org (PRO) is a nonprofit organization that aims to facilitate public access to government records and legal materials. Without permission, PRO posted a digital version of the OCGA on various websites, where it could be downloaded by the public without charge. PRO also distributed copies of the OCGA to various organizations and Georgia officials.
In response, the Commission sent PRO several cease-and-desist letters asserting that PRO’s actions constituted unlawful copyright infringement. When PRO refused to halt its distribution activities, the Commission sued PRO on behalf of the Georgia Legislature and the State of Georgia for copyright infringement. The Commission limited its assertion of copyright to the annotations described above; it did not claim copyright in the statutory text or numbering. PRO counterclaimed, seeking a declaratory judgment that the entire OCGA, including the annotations, fell in the public domain.
The District Court sided with the Commission. The Court acknowledged that the annotations in the OCGA presented “an unusual case because most official codes are not annotated and most annotated codes are not official.” Code Revision Comm’n v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 244 F. Supp. 3d 1350, 1356 (ND Ga. 2017). But, ultimately, the Court concluded that the annotations were eligible for copyright protection because they were “not enacted into law” and lacked “the force of law.” Ibid. In light of that conclusion, the Court granted partial summary judgment to the Commission and entered a permanent injunction requiring PRO to cease its distribution activities and to remove the digital copies of the OCGA from the internet.
