Pow! With Supreme Court Rebuff, DC Comics Wins Batmobile Copyright Case (newsoxy.com)
New submitter Mr. Competence writes: The U.S. Supreme court has declined to review a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court declaring that 'the Batmobile is a character that qualifies for copyright protection.' The case involved Mark Towle, a California man who produced replicas of the Batmobile for car-collecting fans of the caped crusader; selling them for about $90,000US each. The original would cost a bit more.
This is why China will beat us:
- Cost of designing something - rapidly falling due to better CAD technology, improved manufacturing techniques.
- Cost of making something - rapidly falling due to improved manufacturing and robotics.
- Cost of determining whether your rounded rectangle is sufficiently different from someone else's - the sky is the limit.
We created an industrial base that reduced real scarcity to amazingly low levels, and now we are taking the things with no natural resource limit (ideas) and are busy creating as much scarcity out of them as possible. My only hope is that when we tell our grandchildren's generation how this works, they will not believe anyone could be that stupid.