Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

Fox (plaintiff/defendant depending on procedural posture) held television rights to the Crusade in Europe book and produced a companion 1949 TV series, but let the series' own copyright lapse in 1977, placing it in the public domain, even though it later reacquired the book's television rights in 1988; Dastar (defendant/plaintiff) then purchased copies of the original public-domain series, edited and repackaged them under a new title without any attribution to the original series or its creators, and sold them as its own product. Fox sued Dastar for copyright infringement and, under § 43(a) of the Lanham Act, for reverse passing off by failing to credit Fox as the origin of the underlying work; the district court and court of appeals ruled for Fox on the Lanham Act claim, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.