On July 21, 2015, the Government of Georgia sued Public.Resources.Org, a website that claims to “make government information more accessible”, before the Northern District Court of Georgia seeking injunctive relief for copyright infringement.
The government asked for the remedy not because Defendant allegedly copied and distributed through the internet the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (“O.C.G.A.”) itself – since the laws of Georgia are and should be free to the public – but because it distributed its annotations without authorization. According to the government, the annotations include analysis, guidance, synopses of cases, and research references added by a third party publisher. These annotations shall be considered as an original and creative work of authorship protected by copyrights owned by the State of Georgia.
The complaint in Code Revision Commission et al. v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 1:15-cv-02594-MHC, is available at https://ia801504.us…. Open Pdf
More information is available at http://www.abajournal.com…
For more information, Francesca Giannoni-Crystal
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