The Uncopyrightability of Edicts of Government

This amicus brief filed in the Supreme Court appeal of Georgia, et al., v. Public.Resource.Org., explores the interplay of copyright law and the edicts of government doctrine. The “edicts of government” doctrine was first validated by the U.S. Supreme Court in a series of nineteenth century cases. Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 591 (1834); Banks v. Manchester, 128 U.S. 244 (1888); Callaghan v. Meyers, 128 U.S. 617 (1888). While the doctrine has never been directly recognized in the express wording of the copyright statute, it is nevertheless firmly rooted in foundational copyright principles that are themselves reflected in the text of the statute. Three foundational copyright principles buttress the doctrine. First, copyrightable authorship does not extend to official announcements of law, the hallmark of edicts of government. Authorship as requires personalization, an attribute that is antithetical to official pronouncements of law, which are generated in an impersonal and ex officio manner. Second, all edicts of government, as legal texts, are methods of operation, rendering them uncopyrightable. Third, authentic statements of law entail the merger of idea and expression insofar as the expression underlying edicts of government are capable of being expressed in only a limited number of ways in order to preserve its authenticity. Consequently, the Official Code of Georgia (O.C.G.A.) is not copyrightable. Petitioners concede that the statutory content of the O.C.G.A. is uncopyrightable. The annotations incorporated into the O.C.G.A. by the state legislature bear the imprimatur of the state and are therefore produced under the ostensible authority of the state, which renders them an edict of government. Contrary to Petitioners’ argument, an edict does not need to have the force of law to qualify as an uncopyrightable edict of government. The Supreme Court’s precedents contradict this position. Instead, faithful reading of these precedents suggest that something becomes an uncopyrightable edict of government when it is produced under the ostensible authority of the state and thus receives a presumptively official status, owing to its endorsement by the state. The process by which the annotations contained in the O.C.G.A. are adopted and merged with the statutory content therein constitutes the exercise of such ostensible authority, rendering the O.C.G.A. an uncopyrightable edict of government.