Public Records and Copyright

Can Oregon copyright the Oregon Revised Statutes?

This is an older issue that came up in 2008, however, this course has put into perspective for me.  The essential function of a library is to provide access to information, open and unfettered access whenever possible.  For this reason I find the issue of open access to state statutes to be both interesting and vital to understanding how we can balance accuracy with open access.

The basics of this particular disagreement are this: Oregon Legislative Counsel sent out cease and desist letters to Justia and public.resource.org telling them to take down their republished versions of the ORS or to pay a licensing fee (Justia reported this to be $30,000 for 2 years).  The letter asserted copyright to the "...arrangement and subject-matter compilation of Oregon statutory law, the prefatory and explanatory notes, the leadlines and numbering for each statutory section, the tables the index and annotations and such other incidents as are work product of the Committee in the compilation and publication of Oregon law."  The organizations who were sent this letter objected and eventually the state decided to not enforce their copyright assertion.

My understanding of copyright and public records lead me to think the copyright claim was entirely bogus, but this was from a sense that if "ignorance is no excuse" then there has to be free access to the laws.  I understand that there may be more to the ORS than just the legal text, but it is all part of the interpretations of the law and how they will be enforced.  I did not, however, have much to back me up other than one course covering some copyright law as it pertains to libraries.

I then stumbled on the Harvard Law blog Info/Law, which addressed the legal presidents for copyright not applying to government laws and regulations.  I was pleased to find several of the cases that I had studied in my own coursework such as Feist, but was shocked by how recent some of these cases were (e.g. Veeck).  I recommend that anyone who is not familiar with the ideas behind limiting copyright of governmental documents take a look at the post because it is very simple and concise.

So, in all this, have I answered my question?  I have for myself and I think the OLC answered it for Oregon and it is a resound "No".  Laws are public record and not subject to copyright lest the people be subject to rules of which they have no knowledge or ability to gain knowledge.

I looked at several bogs for information on this subject:
Justia's initial report of the C&D letter
Info/Law blog on the whole issue of law copyright
Oregon legal librarian's take