High Court Hands Fox Copyright Defeat

It could sweep away lawsuits often filed against major studios and publishers by authors and others who claim they were given insufficient credit for their contributions.

In spite of that long-range benefit for studios, the ruling itself was a defeat for Fox, which sued Dastar over Dastar's 'Campaigns in Europe' package of videotapes marketed in 1998. The tapes made heavy use of footage from a Fox television series called 'Crusade in Europe,' based on Dwight Eisenhower's book of the same name. The television series aired in 1949 and the copyright expired in 1977.

The Dastar package included a new opening sequence and did not use all of the footage from the television series. In its marketing, Dastar made no mention of the series or the Eisenhower book. Fox sued, claiming the Dastar product amounted to 'reverse passing off' barred by the Lanham Act. The term refers to misrepresenting someone else's work as one's own.

Fox won at both the District Court and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. One member of the 9th Circuit panel was U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who was sitting by designation on the appeals court. His participation explains why his brother, Supreme Court Justice Breyer, did not participate in the case. Breyer routinely recuses in cases ruled on earlier by his brother Charles.

Enacted in 1946, the Lanham Act prohibits 'false designation of origin' for any good or service, including any action that creates confusion as to the origin of the good. But Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the Court, said the phrase refers to the good that is being offered for sale ' in this case the Dastar package of tapes ' not to earlier versions.

Scalia said it would be impractical to require publishers to give credit to all the originators of their products.

Scalia offered the example of the 1954 movie 'Carmen Jones' which, strictly speaking, should give credit to Oscar Hammerstein II, who wrote the musical on which it was based; to Georges Bizet, who wrote the opera on which the musical was based; and to Prosper Merimee, who wrote the novel on which the opera was based.

In the case before the Court, Scalia added, an overly broad interpretation of the Lanham Act could require that credit go to even the military cameramen who took the wartime footage ' not just to Fox for broadcasting the footage.

'We do not think the Lanham Act requires this search for the source of the Nile and all its tributaries,' wrote Scalia.

Scalia noted that Fox could have protected itself by renewing the copyright, which would have led to 'an easy case of copyright infringement' against Dastar.

'The net effect is very far-reaching,' said Morrison & Foerster Washington, DC, lawyer Jonathan Band, who wrote a brief in the case for the American Library Association and other groups seeking expanded access to the public domain. 'There was always this lingering doubt about what the Lanham Act said about copying public domain materials. The Court today said, 'Don't worry about it.”

In recent years, the Lanham Act had become part of the arsenal of legal weapons used by copyright holders against alleged infringers. The ruling Monday appears to eliminate the Lanham Act's use in this legal strategy.

The ruling, by giving added protection to the public domain, also stands in contrast to January's Eldred v. Ashcroft ruling, in which the high court said Congress could limit the public domain by substantially extending copyrights.

Tony Mauro is the U.S. Supreme Court reporter for American Lawyer Media, parent company of Law Journal Newsletters.

[Editor's note: The following article on the Supreme Court's decision in Dastar Corp. v. 20th Century Fox Film Corp. doesn't center on e-commerce. But E-commerce Law & Strategy is offering the synopsis of the decision in the story below for readers who represent Web sites and other e-commerce enterprises that use public-domain material as content to drive sales, use it to market their products and/or Web sites or even sell public-domain material. The High Court's ruling allows use of unattributed public-domain material, lifting concerns that such unattributed use is actionable under the Lanham Act, which some authors and other artists have relied on to seek relief for repeated use of unattributed material, even though such material had entered the public domain.]

In a major narrowing of the Lanham Act, the U.S. Supreme Court on June 2 ruled unanimously that the law allows the copying of public domain material without giving credit to its source.

The 8-0 ruling in Dastar Corp. v. 20th Century Fox Film Corp. (No. 02-428) removes the cloud of Lanham Act liability from companies, libraries, Web sites and databases that repackage facts or information that originated elsewhere.

It could sweep away lawsuits often filed against major studios and publishers by authors and others who claim they were given insufficient credit for their contributions.

In spite of that long-range benefit for studios, the ruling itself was a defeat for Fox, which sued Dastar over Dastar's 'Campaigns in Europe' package of videotapes marketed in 1998. The tapes made heavy use of footage from a Fox television series called 'Crusade in Europe,' based on Dwight Eisenhower's book of the same name. The television series aired in 1949 and the copyright expired in 1977.

The Dastar package included a new opening sequence and did not use all of the footage from the television series. In its marketing, Dastar made no mention of the series or the Eisenhower book. Fox sued, claiming the Dastar product amounted to 'reverse passing off' barred by the Lanham Act. The term refers to misrepresenting someone else's work as one's own.

Fox won at both the District Court and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. One member of the 9th Circuit panel was U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who was sitting by designation on the appeals court. His participation explains why his brother, Supreme Court Justice Breyer, did not participate in the case. Breyer routinely recuses in cases ruled on earlier by his brother Charles.

Enacted in 1946, the Lanham Act prohibits 'false designation of origin' for any good or service, including any action that creates confusion as to the origin of the good. But Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the Court, said the phrase refers to the good that is being offered for sale ' in this case the Dastar package of tapes ' not to earlier versions.

Scalia said it would be impractical to require publishers to give credit to all the originators of their products.

Scalia offered the example of the 1954 movie 'Carmen Jones' which, strictly speaking, should give credit to Oscar Hammerstein II, who wrote the musical on which it was based; to Georges Bizet, who wrote the opera on which the musical was based; and to Prosper Merimee, who wrote the novel on which the opera was based.

In the case before the Court, Scalia added, an overly broad interpretation of the Lanham Act could require that credit go to even the military cameramen who took the wartime footage ' not just to Fox for broadcasting the footage.

'We do not think the Lanham Act requires this search for the source of the Nile and all its tributaries,' wrote Scalia.

Scalia noted that Fox could have protected itself by renewing the copyright, which would have led to 'an easy case of copyright infringement' against Dastar.

'The net effect is very far-reaching,' said Morrison & Foerster Washington, DC, lawyer Jonathan Band, who wrote a brief in the case for the American Library Association and other groups seeking expanded access to the public domain. 'There was always this lingering doubt about what the Lanham Act said about copying public domain materials. The Court today said, 'Don't worry about it.”

In recent years, the Lanham Act had become part of the arsenal of legal weapons used by copyright holders against alleged infringers. The ruling Monday appears to eliminate the Lanham Act's use in this legal strategy.

The ruling, by giving added protection to the public domain, also stands in contrast to January's Eldred v. Ashcroft ruling, in which the high court said Congress could limit the public domain by substantially extending copyrights.

Tony Mauro is the U.S. Supreme Court reporter for American Lawyer Media, parent company of Law Journal Newsletters.