Copyright

To the Batmobile: How DC Comics v. Towle Made a Car a Copyrightable Character

The Ninth Circuit held that the Batmobile is a copyrightable character, building a three-part test that now governs character protection for film and television.

February 10, 2025
A sleek black customized vehicle on a darkened soundstage evoking a movie prop
A vehicle can be a copyrightable character when it is especially distinctive and consistently recognizable across decades of film and television. Shutterstock
Educational content, not legal advice. This article explains general legal concepts. It does not create an attorney–client relationship. For your specific situation, consult a licensed attorney.

A fictional character is one of the most valuable assets a film or television franchise owns, yet the law has never agreed on exactly when a character crosses from unprotectable idea into protectable expression. The Ninth Circuit confronted that question in an unusually vivid setting—a car—in DC Comics v. Towle, No. 13-55484 (9th Cir. Sept. 23, 2015). Writing for a unanimous panel, Judge Sandra Ikuta held that the Batmobile, as it appeared in the 1966 Batman television series and the 1989 Batman feature film, is a copyrightable character, and that a custom-car builder who sold replicas infringed DC’s rights. The opinion did more than settle a dispute over kit cars: it distilled decades of scattered character-copyright doctrine into a structured three-part test that now governs how studios protect the personalities at the center of their motion pictures and series.

At a glance

  • Case: DC Comics v. Mark Towle, No. 13-55484 (9th Cir. Sept. 23, 2015), affirming the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
  • Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Ikuta, J.).
  • Facts: Mark Towle, operating Gotham Garage, built and sold full-size replicas of the Batmobile from the 1966 TV show and 1989 film for roughly $90,000 each, along with kits to modify customers’ cars.
  • Holding: The Batmobile is a copyrightable character; DC retained the underlying copyright despite having licensed others to produce the television and film versions; Towle infringed by producing unauthorized derivative works.
  • Also decided: The court affirmed that Towle could not assert laches against DC’s trademark claim because his infringement was willful.

The case arose not from a Hollywood rival but from a hobbyist’s business. Towle openly marketed his replicas using domain names like batmobilereplicas.com and trading on the car’s fame. DC sued for copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and unfair competition. The district court granted DC summary judgment on the copyright claim, and the Ninth Circuit’s affirmance turned the Batmobile into the doctrinal vehicle—literally—for clarifying when any character earns copyright protection.

The three-part test for character copyrightability

Before Towle, character-copyright law was a patchwork of metaphors. Courts spoke of characters “constituting the story being told” (the Sam Spade line from Warner Bros. Pictures v. Columbia Broadcasting System) and of characters “sufficiently delineated” to be protectable (the standard traceable to Judge Learned Hand’s opinion in Nichols v. Universal Pictures). Towle synthesized these strands into a three-element framework.

First, the character must have “physical as well as conceptual qualities”—it cannot be a mere literary abstraction with no consistent visual or describable form. Second, the character must be “sufficiently delineated to be recognizable as the same character whenever it appears,” displaying “consistent, identifiable character traits and attributes.” Crucially, the panel added that the character “need not have a consistent appearance.” Third, the character must be “especially distinctive” and “contain some unique elements of expression,” excluding stock characters that are merely indistinct types.

Applying that test, the court found the Batmobile easily qualified. It has physical qualities (a bat-like, high-tech automobile) and conceptual ones (a crime-fighting tool that is “swift, cunning, strong, and elusive”). It is recognizable across comics, television, and film despite changing in appearance from one era to the next. And it is plainly distinctive—no one mistakes the Batmobile for a generic sports car. The middle prong did the heavy lifting: by holding that consistent traits matter more than consistent looks, the court protected the essence of a character that has been redesigned countless times.

Why a car, and not just Batman, gets protection

The defense’s most intuitive argument was that a car is an inanimate object, a prop, not a “character” capable of independent copyright. The Ninth Circuit rejected the distinction. Borrowing from its earlier decision recognizing the Eleanor car in Halicki Films v. Sanderson Sales & Marketing as potentially protectable, the panel reasoned that an inanimate object can be a character if it possesses sufficiently delineated, distinctive, and consistent qualities. The Batmobile, with its recurring personality as Batman’s nearly sentient partner in crime-fighting, met that bar.

This holding matters well beyond automobiles. It confirms that copyright can attach to non-human, even non-living, recurring elements of audiovisual works—vehicles, robots, gadgets, and creatures—provided they clear the three-part threshold. For franchise owners, that means the iconography surrounding a hero can be defended as character expression, not merely as part of the larger work in which it appears.

Chain of title: who owns the character a licensee helped build

Towle’s subtler argument went to ownership. The 1966 television series and the 1989 film were produced by licensees, not by DC itself. Towle had copied the Batmobile as it appeared in those derivative productions, and he contended that whatever rights existed belonged to the producers who created those specific designs—or that DC had given those rights away.

The court disagreed, and the analysis is a useful primer on chain of title. DC owned the copyright in the original Batmobile as it appeared in the comic books. When DC licensed others to create the television and film versions, those producers made derivative works; under the licensing agreements and copyright principles, the licensee acquires rights only in the new, original contributions it adds, while the underlying character remains with the original owner. Because the Batmobile in each production was recognizably the same character DC had created, DC’s underlying copyright reached the derivative incarnations. Towle therefore could not escape liability by pointing to the licensees, and DC could enforce against replicas drawn from the TV and film designs.

Open questions

  • How distinctive is “especially distinctive”? The test’s third prong invites line-drawing. Towle gives the Batmobile as a clear yes, but the boundary between a protectable distinctive character and an unprotectable stock type remains fact-intensive.
  • Does the “no consistent appearance” rule cut the other way? If looks can change while protection persists, defendants may argue that a redesign is so radical the traits no longer match—shifting the fight to identity rather than copying.
  • How far do inanimate “characters” extend? Towle validates vehicles, but the same logic could reach weapons, costumes, settings, or props, raising the prospect of overlapping and potentially crowded character claims within a single franchise.

Implications

  • Studios gained a structured tool. The three-part test gives a predictable framework for asserting character copyright in scripts, series, and films, replacing the older grab-bag of metaphors.
  • Traits beat appearance. Franchises that periodically redesign characters can still claim continuity of protection, so long as core attributes endure.
  • Licensing must guard the underlying right. Owners should draft license agreements to confirm that derivative producers gain rights only in their new contributions, preserving the chain of title to the core character.
  • Replica and fan-product businesses face exposure. Commercializing recognizable franchise characters—even physical objects—can infringe, and willfulness can defeat equitable defenses like laches.
  • The decision ripples into later cases. Towle’s test became the controlling standard the Ninth Circuit applied to deny protection in Daniels v. Walt Disney Co., showing the framework cuts both ways.

Frequently asked questions

Can a car really be copyrighted? Not as a useful article in the ordinary sense, but the Batmobile was protected as a character—a recurring, distinctive, sufficiently delineated element of the Batman works. The protection runs to the character, not to functional automotive features.

Does the same test apply to human characters in film and TV? Yes. The three-part test applies to characters generally. A live-action or animated character that has consistent traits and is especially distinctive can qualify; a thinly drawn stock figure cannot.

Why didn’t DC lose the rights by licensing the TV and film versions? Because licensees who create derivative works obtain rights only in their own new additions. The underlying character DC created remained DC’s, and that ownership extended to the licensed incarnations that were recognizably the same character.

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