Thursday, November 13, 2008

Turkey Sues Batman

Okay, is it just us or is this too ridiculous for words? The mayor of "Batman", a city in southeast Turkey, is suing Warner Brothers and Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight over the misappropriation of the city's name. Never mind that Batman, the comic book series created by Bob Kane (artist) and Bill Finger (writer), has been in print since 1939 and that the intellectual property has had lives in other media including radio plays, television series, animation series, and of course, the Tim Burton directed movie from 1989 and its sequels. 

The story according to an MSNBC article goes:
In his lawsuit, Hueyin Kalkan, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party mayor of Batman, is accusing Nolan and the studio of using the city's name without permission ...
Among the charges are a claim that the use of the Batman name is to blame for several unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate, based on the psychological impact that the film's success has had on the city inhabitants ...
Oh, and in case you were wondering, titles do not fall under copyright protection! We don't think town names do either.

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