A recent Ninth Circuit decision has endorsed copyright protection for Batman’s four-wheeled sidekick, confirming that copyright protection can extend to “sufficiently distinctive” elements of an original work, like comic-book...more
When computer science professor Scott Fahlman posted a sideways smiley face on an electronic message board at Carnegie Mellon University in 1982, he could not possibly have known that combination of dots and dashes would give...more
In the spring of 2013, this author reported on the then-recent decision, DC Comics v. Towle, 989 F. Supp. 2d 948 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 7, 2013), where Judge Ronald Lew determined that the Batmobile is a comic book character...more
The California Court of Appeal held earlier this month that certain right of publicity claims are freely assignable, and that the Copyright Act does not preempt a right of publicity claim where the defendant has no legal...more