Court's Decision
The U.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, this rule regarding the misuse of trademarks is trumped by the fact that once a copyrighted work (or, for that matter, a patented invention) passes into the public domain, anyone in the public may do anything they want with the work, with or without attribution to the author.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing in the decision, noted that the Court has said in the past 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," and that, 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, Scalia wrote, "create a species of mutant copyright law that limits the public's 'federal right to "copy and to use"' expired copyrights," and would effectively create "a species of perpetual patent and copyright, which Congress may not do" according to Article One of the United States Constitution.
Scalia noted that if Dastar had instead purchased the post-1988 videotapes and copied them, this would have been a clear copyright infringement.
Read more about this topic: Dastar Corp. V. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.
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