Page:Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org SCOTUS slip opinion.pdf/14

Rh is under Georgia law an act of “legislative authority,” Harrison Co., 244 Ga., at 330, 260 S. E. 2d, at 34, and the annotations provide commentary and resources that the legislature has deemed relevant to understanding its laws. Georgia and emphasize that the annotations do not purport to provide authoritative explanations of the law and largely summarize other materials, such as judicial decisions and law review articles. (dissenting opinion). But that does not take them outside the exercise of legislative duty by the Commission and legislature. Just as we have held that the “statement of the case and the syllabus or head note” prepared by judges fall within the “work they perform in their capacity as judges,” Banks, 128 U. S., at 253, so too annotations published by legislators alongside the statutory text fall within the work legislators perform in their capacity as legislators.

In light of the Commission’s role as an adjunct to the legislature and the fact that the Commission authors the annotations in the course of its legislative responsibilities, the annotations in Georgia’s Official Code fall within the government edicts doctrine and are not copyrightable.

Georgia resists this conclusion on several grounds. At the outset, Georgia advances two arguments for why, in its view, excluding the OCGA annotations from copyright protection conflicts with the text of the Copyright Act. Both are unavailing.

First, Georgia notes that §101 of the Act specifically lists “annotations” among the kinds of works eligible for copyright protection. But that provision refers only to “annotations … which … represent an original work of authorship.” 17 U. S. C. §101 (emphasis added). The whole point of the government edicts doctrine is that judges and legislators cannot serve as authors when they produce works in their official capacity. While the reference to “annotations”