123 S. Ct. 2041; 156L. Ed. 2d 18; 2003U.S. LEXIS 4276; 71 U.S.L.W. 4415; 66 U.S.P.Q.2D (BNA) 1641; Copy. L. Rep. (CCH) ¶ 28,622; 194A.L.R. Fed. 731; 2003 Cal. Daily Op. Service 4554; 2003 Daily Journal DAR 5799; 16 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 330
Case history
Prior
Judgment for plaintiffs, 2000U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22064 (C.D. Cal. Nov. 27, 2000); affirmed in part, sub nom.Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. v. Entertainment Distributing, 34Fed. Appx. 312 (9th Cir. 2002);cert. granted, sub nom.Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 537U.S. 1099 (2003)
Subsequent
Judgment for plaintiffs, 2003U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21194 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 14, 2003); affirmed, sub nom.Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. v. Entertainment Distributing, 429F.3d869 (9th Cir. 2005)
Holding
Plagiarism of public domain works is not a crime under the Lanham Act, which requires only designation of the origin for the original, physical goods rather than the intangible ideas contained therein. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and remanded.
In 1948,Fox obtained the exclusive rights to create a television series,Crusade in Europe, based on a 1948 bookCrusade in Europe, written byDwight Eisenhower and published byDoubleday. The 26-episode series showedWorld War II film footage from the US military and other sources, with a voice soundtrack based on a narration of the book. In 1975, Doubleday renewed the copyright on the book. Fox, however, did not renew the copyright on the TV series and so the show entered thepublic domain in 1977.
In 1988, Fox reacquired the television rights to the book and licensed it to other companies the right to distributeCrusade in Europe on video. In 1995, Dastar purchasedBetacam videotapes of the original TV series, copied the tapes, edited them to about half the original length, created new packaging, and sold the TV series asWorld War II Campaigns in Europe. The new videotapes and advertising mentioned Dastar and its employees as the producer but did not mention the originalCrusade in Europe book, TV series, or producers.
Fox sued in 1998 by claiming that Dastar had infringed the copyright to theCrusade in Europe book and that under theLanham Act, it had illegally done a "reverse passing off" by passing off the work of others as its own work. The district court found for Fox and awarded it double the profits that Dastar had made. The Court of Appeals reversed the copyright claim and sent it back to the district court on remand, but it upheld the "reverse passing off" Lanham Act ruling and affirmed the award of double the profits.
TheU.S. Supreme Court, ruling only on the "reverse passing off" claim, reversed the decisions of the appeals court and district court, ruling 8–0 in favor of Dastar. The Court reasoned that although the Lanham Act forbids a reverse passing off, the rule regarding the misuse oftrademarks is trumped by the fact that once acopyrighted work (or even apatented invention) enters into thepublic domain, anyone in the public may do anything with the work, with or without attribution to the author.
JusticeAntonin Scalia, writing in the decision, noted that the Court in the past has held that the Lanham Act "does not exist to reward manufacturers for their innovation in creating a particular device; that is the purpose of the patent law and its period of exclusivity." Therefore, claims about authorship cannot be used as an end-run around the underlying philosophy of a time limit on exclusive ownership of a copyright or patent. Allowing such restrictions on a public domain work would serve, Scalia wrote, "to create a species of mutant copyright law that limits the public's 'federal right to "copy and to use"' expired copyrights," and that would effectively create "a species of perpetual patent and copyright, which Congress may not do," according toArticle I of theUS Constitution.
Scalia noted that if Dastar had instead purchased the post-1988 videotapes and copied them, that would have been a clear copyright infringement.
In reconciling this case with the earlierEldred v. Ashcroft, Kurt M. Saunders consideredDastar a reassurance from the Supreme Court that, althoughEldred said Congress was free to extend copyright durations, a work outside of copyright was free to use.[2]
On remand, the district court, after the Supreme Court's ruling, dismissed Twentieth Century Fox's Lanham Act claims as well as analogous California state law unfair competition claims.[3] The only remaining issue was whether the plaintiffs had a copyright in the underlying work, Eisenhower's bookCrusade in Europe. The district court held abench trial and determined that the plaintiffs owned a valid copyright in the book and that Dastar had infringed that copyright by including portions of the book's narrative in its film version.[3] Dastar appealed, but the Ninth Circuit affirmed.[4]
This article incorporatespublic domain material from this U.S government document.