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Page Number: 9

6 

GEORGIA v. PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC. 

Opinion of the Court 

the  “authors”  of  the  works  they  produce  in  the  course  of
their  official  duties  as  judges  and  legislators.   That  rule 
applies regardless of whether a given material carries the 
force of law.  And it applies to the annotations here because 
they are authored by an arm of the legislature in the course
of its official duties. 

A 
We  begin  with  precedent.    The  government  edicts  doc-
trine traces back to a trio of cases decided in the 19th cen-
tury.  In this Court’s first copyright case, Wheaton v. Peters, 
8 Pet. 591 (1834), the Court’s third Reporter of Decisions, 
Wheaton, sued the fourth, Peters, unsuccessfully asserting 
a  copyright  interest  in  the  Justices’  opinions.  Id.,  at  617 
(argument).    In  Wheaton’s  view,  the  opinions  “must  have
belonged  to  some  one”  because  “they  were  new,  original,”
and  much  more  “elaborate”  than  law  or  custom  required. 
Id., at 615.  Wheaton argued that the Justices were the au-
thors  and  had  assigned  their  ownership  interests  to  him
through a tacit “gift.”  Id., at 614.  The Court unanimously 
rejected that argument, concluding that “no reporter has or 
can have any copyright in the written opinions delivered by 
this  court”  and  that  “the  judges  thereof  cannot  confer  on 
any reporter any such right.”  Id., at 668 (opinion).

That conclusion apparently seemed too obvious to adorn 
with further explanation, but the Court provided one a half 
century later in Banks v. Manchester, 128 U. S. 244 (1888). 
That case concerned whether Wheaton’s state-court coun-
terpart,  the  official  reporter  of  the  Ohio  Supreme  Court, 
held  a  copyright  in  the  judges’  opinions  and  several  non-
binding explanatory materials prepared by the judges.  Id., 
at 249–251.  The Court concluded that he did not, explain-
ing that “the judge who, in his judicial capacity, prepares
the opinion or decision, the statement of the case and the 
syllabus or head note” cannot “be regarded as their author 
or their proprietor, in the sense of [the Copyright Act].”  Id.,