Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 539 U.S. 23 (2003), was a copyright and trademark case of the Supreme Court of the United States involving the applicability of the Lanham Act to a work in the public domain.

The 26-episode series showed World War II film footage from the US military and other sources, with a voice soundtrack based on a narration of the book.

Justice Antonin 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.

[3] The only remaining issue was whether the plaintiffs had a copyright in the underlying work, Eisenhower's book Crusade in Europe.