Dastar Corporation v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation et al. (539 U.S. 23)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 2, 2003 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 539 U.S. 23 · 123 S. Ct. 2041
- Decided
- June 2, 2003
- Term
- October Term 2002
- Vote
- 8–0
- Majority author
- Justice Scalia
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court. In this cáse, we are asked to decide whether § 43(a) of the Lanham Act, 15 U. S. C. § 1125(a), prevents the unaccredited copying of a work, and if so, whether a court may double a profit award under § 1117(a), in order to deter future infringing conduct. I In 1948, three and a half years after the German surrender at Reims, General Dwight D. Eisenhower completed Crusade in Europe, his written account of the allied campaign in Europe during World War II. Doubleday published the book, registered it with the Copyright Office in 1948, and granted exclusive television rights to an affiliate of respondent Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation (Fox). Fox, in turn, arranged for Time, Inc., to produce a television series, also called Crusade in Europe, based on the book, and Time assigned its copyright in the series to Fox. The television series, consisting of 26 episodes, was first broadcast in 1949. It combined a soundtrack based on a narration of the book with film footage from the United States Army, Navy, and Coast Guard, the British Ministry of Information and War Office, the National Film Board of Canada, and unidentified “Newsreel Pool Cameramen.’' In 1975, Doubleday renewed the copyright on the book as the “ ‘proprietor of copyright in a work made for hire.’” App. to Pet. for Cert. 9a. Fox, however, did not renew the…
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