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University of Georgia School of Law

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

2019

O.C.G.A.

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Will You Have To Pay For The O.C.G.A.?: Copyrighting The Official Code Of Georgia Annotated, Elizabeth Holland Jul 2019

Will You Have To Pay For The O.C.G.A.?: Copyrighting The Official Code Of Georgia Annotated, Elizabeth Holland

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

In the 1970s, the Georgia General Assembly set out to perfect the organization of the laws of the state. The State worked with a publishing company to not only codify the statutory portions but also create additional annotations to explain the application of the law in practice. When enacting the code, the State merged the statutory portion with the annotations to create the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (O.C.G.A.). Georgia sought to retain the copyright in the O.C.G.A.

Years later, Carl Malamud and Public.Resource.Org, Inc. (Public Resource) challenged this construction. He alleged merging the statutory code with the annotated version …