Batmobile Maker Appeals To Supreme Court

California mechanic Mark Towle, who was enjoined from creating Batmobile vehicles based on the Batman TV series and 1989 film, has appealed to the Supreme Court, saying the U.S. Copyright Office has said automobiles are not copyrightable, and that the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court created an arbitrary exception in his case. Should the the Ninth Circuit decision be allowed to stand, Towle argues, “If Ford Motor Company wants to protect the design of its new line of pick-up trucks, all that it would have to do is to create a comic book in which the trucks are ‘characters.’ … By simply drawing one of its trucks in a comic book and calling it a character, Ford would thus obtain 95 years of protection for its car design, instead of the 14-year protection that Congress intended it to receive pursuant to a design patent.”