Free Online Access to Georgia's Legal Code Violates Copyright, Judge Says
Mike Hobbs was quoted in a March 28 Daily Report article based on his representation of LexisNexis with associate Austin Padgett, which has a contract with the state of Georgia to publish and sell its annotated legal code. The article detailed a countersuit by nonprofit Public.Resource.Org, Inc., which claimed state laws are not copyrightable, and reported that this week a federal judge in Atlanta ruled that the state can copyright its official legal code and pursue infringers. Of the case and the ruling, Mike said LexisNexis "thinks it’s a very good decision. It reinforces the long-standing rule of law that annotations are copyrightable and it also upholds the fact that fair use does not provide cover for use of these annotations as made by Public.Resource.Org. During the litigation, both sides agreed that Georgia laws and their statutory numbering by volume, title and section are not copyrightable. But they disagreed over whether Malamud could publish online all of the annotated texts included in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, including summaries of public judicial decisions, notes on law review articles and summaries of opinions by the state attorney general. Those annotations are compiled by LexisNexis publisher Matthew Bender and Co. Inc. In a March 23 order, U.S. District Judge Richard Story acknowledged the "unusual circumstances" in Georgia where the only official version of the state legal code includes annotations. Most official state codes are not annotated, and most annotated codes are not official, Story observed. In addition, he said, the U.S. Copyright Office has a long-standing policy of rejecting registrations of "a government edict" issued by any state that carries "the force of law."”Mike was also mentioned in a Law360 article about the ruling. The article was also included on the front page of The Daily Report’s March 29 print issue.