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12 

GEORGIA v. PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC. 

Opinion of the Court 

in  §101  may  help  explain  why  supplemental,  explanatory 
materials  are  copyrightable  when  prepared  by  a  private
party, or a non-lawmaking official like the reporter in Cal-
laghan, it does not speak to whether those same materials 
are copyrightable when prepared by a judge or a legislator.
In  the  same  way  that  judicial  materials  are  ineligible  for
protection  even  though  they  plainly  qualify  as  “[l]iterary 
works . . . expressed in words,” ibid., legislative materials
are  ineligible  for  protection  even  if  they  happen  to  fit  the 
description of otherwise copyrightable “annotations.”

Second, Georgia draws a negative inference from the fact 
that  the  Act  excludes  from  copyright  protection  “work[s]
prepared  by  an  officer  or  employee  of  the  United  States 
Government  as  part  of  that  person’s  official  duties”  and 
does not establish a similar rule for the States.  §101; see 
also §105.  But the bar on copyright protection for federal 
works  sweeps  much  more  broadly  than  the  government 
edicts doctrine does.  That bar applies to works created by
all federal “officer[s] or employee[s],” without regard for the 
nature of their position or scope of their authority.  What-
ever policy reasons might justify the Federal Government’s 
decision to forfeit copyright protection for its own proprie-
tary works, that federal rule does not suggest an intent to
displace  the  much  narrower  government  edicts  doctrine 
with respect to the States.  That doctrine does not apply to
non-lawmaking officials, leaving States free to assert copy-
right in the vast majority of expressive works they produce,
such  as  those  created  by  their  universities,  libraries, 
tourism offices, and so on. 

More  generally,  Georgia  suggests  that  we  should  resist 
applying  our  government  edicts  precedents  to  the  OCGA
annotations  because  our  19th-century  forebears  inter-
preted  the  statutory  term  author  by  reference  to  “public
policy”—an approach that Georgia believes is incongruous
with the “modern era” of statutory interpretation.  Brief for 
Petitioners 21 (internal quotation marks omitted).  But we