The annotations explain and expound upon the statutes and contain "summaries of state attorney general's opinions, advisory opinions by the State Bar of Georgia, summaries of important court rulings, excerpts of law review articles, legislative histories[,] and repeals".

[2] The Commission entered into a work-for-hire agreement with Matthew Bender & Co., Inc., a division of the LexisNexis Group, to prepare annotations.

While the state claimed that the OCGA is easily accessible via libraries, journalists for Atlanta news channel 11Alive were "unable to find a complete set of current law books at three branches of the Fulton County Public Library, including the main branch in downtown Atlanta", noting that "[t]he law books were kept behind a locked door, and we had to ask for special permission to view them.

[8][6] State representative Johnnie Caldwell Jr., Chairman of the Code Revision Commission, issued a statement explaining that "the OCGA contains two separate and distinct types of content... the law itself... [and] ancillary material, such as cross references, case annotations, editor's notes, law reviews, etc.

[4] On October 18, 2018, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit unanimously reversed the previous ruling, finding that the OCGA is "intrinsically public domain material" and that its annotations "clearly have authoritative weight in explicating and establishing the meaning and effect of Georgia's laws".

[20] Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion, joined by Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh:[20] he noted that, binding law or not, official works of the Georgia legislature could not be copyrighted, as they could deprive citizens of knowledge of those laws and their corollaries.

Like the 11th Circuit, they cited the SCOTUS decision in Banks v. Manchester (1888) and extend the same logic as they applied to legal binding and non-bind material created by judges, to non-binding, non-authoritative and explanatory legal materials created by a legislative body vested with the authority to make law.

They held that the Commission functions as an arm for the Georgia Legislature and its work thus falls under the sphere of "legislative authority".

Finally, it was the legislature itself that approved and merged the annotations with the statutory provisions and published the OCGA "by authority of the state".

This is elucidated by distinguishing the decision in Banks from Callaghan v. Myers[25] where the Court permitted a reporter to hold copyright in explanatory materials he had added to the judgements, such as headnotes, syllabi, tables of contents, on the grounds that he did not have authority to speak with the force of law.

The doctrine does not apply to non-lawmaking officials, leaving States free to assert copyright in the vast majority of expressive works they produce, such as those created by their universities, libraries, tourism offices, and so on.

The State of Georgia also contended on policy grounds that the purpose of the Copyright Act is to promote the creation and dissemination of creative works and without such protection many states will be unable induce private parties to assist in the preparation of affordable annotated codes for widespread distribution.

The Court finally observes that a decision allowing copyright protection for anything merely falling short of being classified as a statute or a judicial opinion would result in First Amendment concerns.

The opinion illustrates the context in which Banks was decided, i.e., in the 19th century, much before multiple revisions made to the Copyright Act.

At the time, copyright protection was extended for books, maps, prints, engravings, musical and dramatic compositions, photographs, and works of art.

It notes that judicial opinions were starkly different from this list of works because they are legally binding, reflect the application of the rule of law, and in turn represent the implementation of the will of the people.

"[24] The opinion also notes that in Callaghan, the Court, while accepting the principle in Banks, limited its application by concluding that “no [similar] ground of public policy” justified denying a state official a copyright "cover[ing] the matter which is the result of his intellectual labor.

[33] It states that disallowing copyright would result in the creation of an "economy-class" or sub par version of the Code, that would not contain these important annotations.

This sets the OCGA annotations apart from uncopyrightable legislative materials like committee reports, generated before a law’s enactment, and tied tightly to the task of law-formulation.