I agree that the problem as far as I understand it is not really that related to copyright: the law (unannotated) is freely available, as it should be, and of course value-adding annotations by private enterprise can hold enforcable copyright. (The references in other comments below to EU regulations etc. are thus not really applicable, as also in the EU you have freely available laws but privately copyrighted annotations and comments to these laws.)

What I gather from the article, though, and which I do find in a way even stranger than the copyright question, is this: Apparently Georgia has made the annotated version of their law "official"! Can this be right? For me, this sounds far worse than the copyright question - it would mean that you give an official stamp of approval to privately prepared annotations?

The article is not that clear on this question. Wikipedia [1] has some more on it, but not being a lawyer, I also can't answer the question I would have about it, which is this: What's the role of these privately prepared annotations for the judiciary process? Are they treated like law, because they are published together with the law? Or are they treated like any other private comment / annotations out there would? This, for me, seems to be the crucial question. If it is the former, they should be freely available (and, more importantly, not be written by a private company!). If it is the latter, then I think LexisNexis has some point claiming their copyright, no?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Code_of_Georgia_Annot...