Bruce Wayne adopted the symbol of the bat as to strike fear into the hearts of criminals - a superstitious, cowardly lot. DC trademarked the Batman symbol because it is worth literally millions of dollars in merchandising rights. It's with that staggering amount of money in mind that the company seeks to protect its copyright by any means necessary, which explains why they're coming down so hard on a Spanish football team whose redesigned logo looks a little bit too close to the insignia emblazoned across the chest of The Dark Knight. Bit of an own goal you're scoring their, Valencia. There are worse teams to be associated with. Right now Valencia are fighting for supremacy at the top of La Liga, the Premier League of Spanish football (albeit with a lot more passing) (like, so much passing) (and not a lot else), and the bat has been part of the club's insignia for decades. It's only now that they revised the logo into the one seen above that DC Comics are considering pressing charges, with reports out today that they have filed papers for a copyright infringement claim against Valencia to the OHIC, which governs the European Union's trademark registration body. Probably not going to win DC any fans in Spain, especially considering Batman (and his insignia) made his debut in Detective Comics #27 in 1940; Valencia, meanwhile, have been rocking that bat logo since 1919. Woops. Still, it could be worse. DC could be blocking the construction of a memorial to a kid who died tragically young of abuse and neglect that was due to feature his favourite character Superman, because that would also infringe their trademark and oh wait they totally did that too. Not a great time to be DC's PR guy.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
