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LOS ANGELES: Batman comics publisher DC Comics scored a knockout punch on Monday over knock-off Batmobiles, winning a legal battle in the US’s highest court.
The US Supreme Court let stand a lower court’s decision that the bat-winged driving machine was protected by the same copyright as its crime-fighting driver.
Without so much as a POW! BAM! or THWACK!, the comics publisher thus triumphed over a California mechanic who had been producing unauthorised replicas of the Caped Crusader’s car.
The ersatz Batmobiles were modelled on the superhero’s rides from the 1966 Batman television series, starring Adam West, and the 1989 Batman, starring Michael Keaton.
Gotham Garage owner Mark Towle had kitted out his replicas with features like “custom bat insignia, wheel bats and a bat steering wheel” and sold them for as much as $90 000, according to court documents.
In September last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the futuristic, jet-black car was “sufficiently distinctive” to warrant the same copyright protection as a fictional character.
“As Batman so sagely told Robin: ‘In our well-ordered society, protection of private property is essential’,” the court wrote in its ruling. – dpa
Ba tm anv Superman: Dawn of Justice opens in South African cinemas on March 24.
The Batmobile is protected private property