Slashdot Mirror
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.
As for why DC might not want a bunch of Batmobiles on the road, they might not like the possibility of a mangled Batmobile showing up on TV after it ran into a train, or a bunch of cops chasing one used in a bank robbery, or maybe something even more silly. Who knows. But that's their decision.
Yes, child, I know how the law works, and it has been perverted. The purpose of copyright is to ensure that a work passes into the hands of the people after a reasonable period.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.