Warners Wins Dark Knight Rises Trademark Case

Warner Bros. has prevailed again in the trademark infringement case brought by software company Fortres Grand, the makers of the Clean Slate computer program.

In the 2012 blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises, Batman offers Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman, aka Selena Kyle, a fabled piece of software known as Clean Slate. The fictional program promised to give Kyle a new beginning thanks to its ability to destroy any trace of her criminal background from every database on the planet. The real life version put out by Fortres Grand merely purports to erase user changes to a single computer system, essentially restoring a public terminal to its pre-login state.

According to THR, the software company sued Warner Bros. after The Dark Knight Rises’ release alleging trademark infringement and, more specifically, “reverse confusion.” Basically they were arguing that people might think their product was somehow associated with a fictional computer program that could never possibly exist ever. The trial court held in favor of Warners, dismissing the case.