By: Sharon Urias, Esq.
The Batmobile, which first appeared in the television series Batman in 1966 and then in the variousBatman movies on the big screen, is a sleek looking, ebony vehicle loaded with all the widgets and gadgets that a superhero of Batman’s status needs to fight the criminals of Gotham City.
One California designer has been building replicas of the iconic automobile for more than ten years. Fans of the Batmobile can have their own vehicle outfitted to look just like the superhero’s car by Mark Towle, the owner of Gotham City Garage in Santa Ana, California. Customers must wait a year and spend up to $90,000 for the modification kit and labor that creates a virtual Batmobile from their vehicle.
Unfortunately for those customers on Towle’s waiting list, after a ruling this week in federal court, they may never have the chance to drive their own personal Batmobile.
U.S.District Judge Ronald Lew of Los Angeles sided with DC Comics in its copyright suit against Towle. Judge Lew refused to dismiss the case, writing the defendant Towle, violated an exclusive right of DC Comic’s copyright ownership. The judge also stated in reference to Towle’s argument that the Batmobile as a vehicle is not subject to copyright protection, “that the defendant’s argument lacked merit.”
Judge Lew wrote that although copyright law usually does not apply to autos or other useful articles, he could make a “reasonable inference that there may be non-functional artistic elements of the Batmobile that may possibly be separated from the utilitarian aspect of the automobile… and that the Batmobile and all of its relevant embodiments are not excluded from copyright protection.”
Towle argued that because he had been building Batmobile replica vehicles for over ten years and because the company did not enforce its intellectual property rights from 1995 to 2010, and did not register the trademark for use on automobiles until November 2012, the company waited too long to assert its rights.
Although Judge Lew’s ruling does not mean DC Comics has won its copyright/trademark infringement case, the ruling does dampen Towle’s chances and he basically has two options; he can either settle with DC Comics or defend himself in court. If Towle decides to take his chances at a copyright infringement trial and loses, he could face a maximum penalty of $150,000 for each violation, which in his case, means a violation for every Batmobile he has built over the past ten years.
Original articles can be found here.
