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Code Revision Commission V. Public.Resource.Org And The Fight Over Copyright Protection For Annotations And Commentary, David E. Shipley

Scholarly Works

This article is about the Eleventh Circuit’s 2018 decision in Code Revision Commission v. Public.Resource.Org concerning the public edicts doctrine and holding that the State of Georgia’s copyright on the annotations, commentary and analyses in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated is invalid. About a third of the States claim copyright in the annotations to their codes so the potential impact of this decision is substantial. The U.S. Supreme Court granted Georgia’s petition for a writ of certiorari on Monday, June 24.

The article’s thesis is that the Eleventh Circuit was wrong and should be reversed. It first discusses the …