Almost exactly two hundred and thirty years after the enactment of the Copyright Act of 1790, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that copyright protections do not apply to Georgia’s official annotated code. In so doing, the Court expanded the rule it adopted in its first copyright case, Wheaton v. Peters, which prevents judges from copyrighting their written opinions and transferring them to the court’s reporter of decisions, to its most recent copyright case. In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., the Court’s majority ruled that the nineteenth-century era government edicts doctrine also excludes works created by legislators, acting in the course of their legislative duties, from copyright protection.
Copyright-Law-Cannot-Copyright-Law_Georgia-v.-Public.Resource.Org_