Holy litigation, Batman! Custom Batmobile cars nixed by copyright

This period in history will leave future generations shaking their heads and covering their mouths with their hands as they gasp in disbelief.

Like the Krell, seemingly at the pinnacle of their scientific and technological advancement, the entire civilization imploded and disappeared overnight.

During the period when humans were most able to imagine and ultimately realize their dreams and ideas... they suddenly quit making - anything. No music, no plays, no variants or individual expressions of what appears to have been a rich popular culture, no original thought at all...

It all just stopped due to something called "intellectual property". The concept that a corporate entity could own certain thoughts, shapes, patterns, sounds, numbers, colors, ideas, actions, molecular combinations, physical laws, concepts, ... and that all others were forbidden from thinking, singing, acting out, assembling, imagining, building or discussing them without permission and payment of coin to the "owner".

There will be few relics for future historians to sift through. It will appear a joyless period known as the Dark Wasteland Age.

Funny thing is I was taught to believe that the Social Contract was basically I give up certain freedoms, or have them limited and adjudicated, I share my income through taxes on everything, defend against enemies from without, vote and serve on juries to defend against enemies from within and in turn I get to share in the ideas and advancements made by others. My bad :P

I'm really not in agreement with this rant. I think that the Court was correct.

This person was not merely making "cool cars." He was clearly making replicas, specifically of "The Batmobile." (To avoid any possible confusion, his company is called "Gotham Garage.")

If DC Comics had not spent a lot of money creating and promoting the Batman character, and building the original car(s) and putting them into movies, Mr. Towle would not have a market to sell to. It's only proper that DC should receive a royalty, have a say in what the cars do and do not look like, and so on. Otherwise, Towle is simply freeloading ... profiting unfairly from what someone else had done.

And, had he had his business wits about him, he would have immediately sought to make peace with DC. A mutually profitable joint-venture could have been struck, with plenty of money for all. (Hell, the next time a movie needed to be made, maybe Towle could have been the one engaged to make the car!)

You make it sound as if we're proceeding through an historic, and revolutionary era in time where ages old dreams can finally be made into reality. Like no one was ever capable of constructing a bat mobile before. Where is the original thought? This garage COPIED the concept from somewhere else.

Jefferson argued for a 14 year copyright with a 14 extension

28 with a 28 was agreed to
now it is LIFE!!! plus 70 years


if as a Author or creator of works you CAN not make your time invested back in the form of cash in 14 years
then why the FU?K did you make it in the first place !!!

if you require 160 YEARS!!! ( life +70 ) for the return on investment

you are doing something VERY WRONG @!!!! and need to find a new line of work


and YES i create art !!!!

In the US Patent and Copyright laws were enacted so that the government could promote economic innovation and growth by affecting an important and realistic process. It was recognized that in almost all business ventures, but especially in groundbreakingly creative ones, the cost of doing business is very high initially and often prohibitive to the point that thrust would fail before it ever started. A good example of this process was the introduction of Aluminum into the marketplace which follows a never ending need to have structural materials that are both lighter and stronger than the last generation of materials, or sufficiently so to be a net gain. The cost of mining and smelting ore was so high and the required selling price to come close to breaking even on production costs was as a result so high as to not be commercially viable. Aluminum would never have happened (and all it's derivatives and offshoots, like aircraft, both private and commercial, aluminum block engines , etc. etc etc. had the Fed not allowed ALCOA, iirc, to enjoy a complete monopoly for a specific period of time in which they could not only break even but be rewarded with profit for their efforts and expenses.

However had that "grace period" time not been limited Aluminum would never have become so cheap and commonplace. Again, whole markets would never have come into being. So originally, right from the beginning in the US, patent and copyright laws were among the most realistic of laws, exerting am inestimable positive force on the Economy and the well-being of the Nation as a whole.

Unfortunately this has changed and not for the better but in fact completely skewed to benefit a few large corporations and NOT the Nation as a whole. It has gone so far that when I wrote several Congressmen about the dangerous and stultifying direction we seemed to be heading in, I was completely misunderstood and assumed to be asking for more hedges against naturally evolving into the Public Domain, more deference to a few corporations, and got a firm pledge that they would be exerting influence to make patent/copyrights stricter and fully in force over a longer period of time.

I find the following dialogue to speak to the potency and universality of the matter, but if any reader is offended by "street", read no further.

Ahh, Enorbet, the historical record does not confirm your story about Alcoa. What actually happened was that Alcoa was trust-busted under the Sherman Act. From http://www.alcoa.com/usa/en/alcoa_usa/history.asp ...
Copyrights cover intangible intellectual properties and are conceived to benefit the creator as well as the creator's heirs. Therefore, they exist for the lifetime of the creator plus a certain number of years. (And the "Mickey Mouse law" provides for certain indefinite extensions, recognizing that corporations such as The Walt Disney Company are perpetual, and that The Mouse does not strictly belong to (the ghost of ...) Walt himself.)

Patents, on the other time, are intended to promote and to reward innovation. Therefore, they exist only for a limited amount of time, and are narrowly defined, in order both to give the inventor time to exploit his mousetrap and to encourage someone else to invent a better mousetrap.

@sundialsvcs - I'm afraid I don't understand why what Alcoa did in addition to (and in abuse of) what their patents allowed has any bearing on the concept that "temporary exclusivity" is important to the vitality of an economy and it's social fabric. The important part is that BOTH aspects, exclusivity AND temporary, are extremely important in avoiding stagnation at the very least. That there are some kinds of intellectual property that are so unique that they get a pass on "temporary" is probably also important but needs to be judged and revisited if it is to serve that combination of individual and collective good.

True laissez-faire Capitalism has never existed or if it has it lasted a very short time because people with wealth, power, and influence will always seek to hedge their bets, or more accurately, everyone seeks it but some have the means to indulge their whims, even if it has the long term effect of defecating in the kitchen.

These days those of influence have all but abolished "temporary" or circumvented it by making Foo v101 obsolete and non-functional as part of introducing Foo v202. It is also common practrice to develop "Z" but choose to sell "A", then "B", then "C" and so on in increments described by how many are willing to pay at what price point. It has become the Me Generation on steroids where few are even taught any sense of value, let alone obligation to, team effort and posterity.

And who has the right to wear the Lone Ranger's mask?

You will notice that movie cowboys did not wear a mask.

If I created an invention ... a new widget ... then I am entitled to have a temporary period of exclusivity in which to get rich if I can. But, other people are free to copy the details of my invention (which are public), and to change it slightly, perchance to make it better.

If I created a song or a book, there is nothing someone else can do to "improve upon" it. Therefore, I get my exclusivity for life ... and, at least, the first generation of my children do, too. Someone else can produce a knock-off ... there were plenty of other Mice ... but no one can copy my work exactly. And, if someone produces a "derivative work," I get a share. (For example, MC Hammer's Can't Touch This is a derivative of Super Freak's sound recording. Bruce Hornsby and Ricky Scaggs(!!) produced a totally different arrangement of the same song ... also a derivative ... and BTW, check it out.) Even a ring-tone pays royalties.

Well he would have to have licensed it from Zorro first...

Yeah, there's only so many ways to package a cowboy. Or, an "injun." You cannot copyright, trademark, or patent an idea. (Although "software patents" these days come damn close ... which is why they are basically useless to anyone but attorneys.)

Movie studios never could claim an exclusive territorial claim to putting a mask on a cowboy and using that cowboy to sell Ovaltine. (Oh, wait ... that was Roy Rogers, wasn't it?) Mostly, it was a matter of product differentiation. You really didn't care that much about the Lone Ranger movies: you cared about the Lone Ranger® m-e-r-c-h-a-n-d-i-s-e.

(And, "they still do." Google that, and you will see exactly what I mean.)

Cultural suicide by intellectual property
Microsoft has a copyright on their code. Not sure if that includes products or services created as derivative works. I noticed the copyrights on the Microsoft pages when I started to code back in the 80's, and asked myself how I could use their products if all their code was copyrighted by them. The first programs I coded were claimed by my employer, as in 'you did it at work - so they belong to us.' The programs could just as well have been claimed as property by Lotus, because I was using their software to write the programs. I have read a saying that goes something like 'You only have the rights to what you can afford to defend.' So, corruption has no limits; ignorance is by far the most powerful influence on Earth; life is not fair, and deal with it. One thing I learned hard and clear is that the people with the gold make the rules, and I could die - trying to change that.

Actually, no. The maker of a chisel does not have an intellectual-property claim to your sculpture. Furthermore, the only way to make what the law would consider to be "a derivative work" of Microsoft's products is to possess and then to modify their source code. Which, of course, you do not have.

The law does provide for "work made for hire," and it requires that exact phrase to appear in the contract as a red-flag. However, courts have taken an increasingly narrow view of contracts that include it. The "old" contracts which said that your employer owned anything that you made while in their employ have mostly been struck down. Sadly, too many people sign similar agreements with regard to patents, which have not.

http://www.copyright.gov, while very careful to say "we are not a lawyer," is a very well done site that will do a lot to dispel mis-information about US Copyright Law. (I'm really impressed by the work of the team that built it and provided its content ... and if any of you happen to be listening, "yeah, I meant that.")

There was a copyright declaration on every published Microsoft page - up until the copyright laws changed. That declaration applied to the code that made up the pages. One could argue that the HTML - Javascript code making the page is not the chisel - it's the sculpture. The visible pages in the browser are the gold plating. Microsoft books is a publisher, and all those books are protected under copyright. So can I iterate through a line of code by saying 'for (i)' without breaking their copyright? Notice Microsoft does not release into the public domain.

Microsoft dot net and all the code and thousands of classes (lines of code that create models) are the works of Microsoft. So if I use that work to create my program without their express permission - have I violated their copyright? That was my question years ago. Oracle owns Java, and the same applies. Of course, we don't worry about it until someone starts making $millions. Then you get companies popping out of the woodwork screaming 'derivative works!'

All that is moot now. Not many people care about code. The new thing is personal and private information - the collection, storing, and selling of it in every possible form to anyone who has the money to buy it. The tech sector of the Fortune 500 have spent $Billions to (or that will - however you see it) grab that information. Additionally, the valuable secrets companies have been locking away for centuries are at risk. Corporate espionage has gone automated. I imagine lawyers across the country tooling up for the waves of business these capabilities will generate.

Thanks for the response sundialsvcs