Watching the 2022 Warner Brothers movie The Batman, Christopher Wozniak, a former freelance artist for DC Comics, was purportedly stunned by "so many similarities" between the movie and "his story." Wasting no time, Wozniak filed an application with the United States Copyright Office to register a work he called "Wozniak Batman Riddler Plot." He listed 1990 as the creation date of the work and uploaded an electronic copy of it to the Copyright Office's filing system. He left blank the field in the application that asked whether the work contained any pre-existing material.
The Copyright Office issued Wozniak his registration in three weeks, and with that in hand, Wozniak sued Warner Brothers in the district court for the Southern District of New York, alleging direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringement.
DC Comics—the longtime owner and publisher of Batman comics—intervened in the case as a third-party defendant, counterclaimed for copyright infringement against Wozniak, and joined Warner Brothers in moving for summary judgement on all counts. In a separate claim, DC Comics asked the court to find that Wozniak had committed fraud on the Copyright Office because, in registering his work, he did not disclose that it incorporated copyright-protected Batman material owned by DC Comics.
This whirlwind of disputes over who owns the copyright to the "Batman Riddler" story comes with a quick and—for DC and Warner Brothers—happy ending. The Southern District of New York's Judge Engelmayer granted summary judgment for the movie and comic companies on all of Wozniak's copyright infringement claims against them, and granted summary judgment for DC Comics on its copyright infringement claim against Wozniak. However, the court found DC Comics' evidence insufficient to support an entry of summary judgment on the claim that Wozniak had deliberately defrauded the Copyright Office.
Wozniak's Claim Against Warner Brothers
To make out a claim of copyright infringement, Wozniak needed to establish two elements: "(1) ownership of a valid copyright; and (2) unauthorized copying of the copyrighted work." The court found that Wozniak satisfied neither of these elements.
A certificate of registration from the Copyright Office issued within five years of first publication of a work creates a rebuttable presumption of validity. Wozniak attempted to rely on this rebuttable presumption to show that he owned a valid copyright in the "Wozniak Batman Riddler Plot" work, which he allegedly created in 1990 and registered in 2022. However, he had never published his story, let alone registered it within five years of publication, and therefore could not invoke the presumption.
Moreover, the court agreed with Warner Brothers that Wozniak's work was not entitled to copyright protection, because Wozniak's story used elements of the "Batman Universe" covered by DC Comics' valid copyrights, without DC Comics' permission. Pointing to Wozniak's deposition transcript, in which he admitted that his story was a "reimagining of the Batman Universe," the court concluded that Wozniak's story was an unauthorized derivative work that was consequently not eligible for copyright protection.
Wozniak attempted to establish the second element—unauthorized copying—indirectly, through proof of access and substantial similarity. Wozniak posited various theories for how Warner Brothers (and its screenwriter) might have gained access to his work—including that he pitched it to DC Comics in the 1990s—but the court found Wozniak's testimony to fall short of the "significant, affirmative and probative evidence" necessary to support a claim of access. Moreover, the court noted that Wozniak's "speculative" "theory" was inconsistent with the facts revealed through discovery—namely, Warner Brothers and DC Comics had searched their records and did not find any copy of Wozniak's story.
Because Wozniak could not establish a prima facie case of infringement, the court entered summary judgment in favor of Warner Brothers on Wozniak's copyright infringement claims.
DC Comics' Claim Against Wozniak
DC Comics submitted thousands of copyright registrations for Batman works, creating a rebuttable presumption of ownership of a valid copyright in works constituting the "Batman Universe." The court also noted that prior cases had established DC Comics' ownership of copyrights in the Batman character, the Batmobile, and other Batman story elements.
Attempting to rebut that presumption, Wozniak argued that (1) DC Comics did not submit evidence of an agreement with the creators of the original Batman comic (Bob Kane, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Bill Finger) showing that they had assigned their ownership rights to DC Comics, and (2) some Batman registrations are owned by entities other than DC Comics—i.e., Detective Comics Inc., National Periodical Publications, Inc., and National Comics Publications, Inc. —and DC Comics had not proved its chain of title. The court was not convinced that either of Wozniak's arguments should preclude summary judgment in DC's favor. Wozniak did not cite any legal authorities to support his arguments. Neither did he adduce any evidence to cast doubt on the validity of DC Comics' claim to own the original Batman works, as works made for hire or via assignments. Thus, the court found that DC Comics had established that it owned valid copyrights in the Batman works.
To show the second element of its claim, unauthorized copying, DC Comics pointed to Wozniak's deposition testimony conceding that he had intentionally created a "Batman story" using Batman characters and story elements. While Wozniak argued that any copying was with DC Comics' consent, as he was encouraged to pitch stories involving characters from DC Comics' works while he was working as a freelance artist for the company, the court disagreed. The court found that DC Comics had at most consented to Wozniak's using Batman characters to submit story ideas to DC Comics; it never gave Wozniak permission to create derivative works drawn from its copyrighted works for his own use or exploitation.
Wozniak argued that DC Comics' infringement claim was barred by the statute of limitations because he had created the allegedly infringing story more than 30 years earlier. However, without needing to rely on the Second Circuit's "discovery rule," the court concluded that DC's claim was not time-barred because Wozniak committed a separate act of infringement in 2022, when he uploaded a copy of the story to the Copyright Office's online registration portal.
Because DC Comics had satisfied both elements of its copyright infringement counterclaim, and its claim was not time-barred, the court granted summary judgment finding Wozniak liable for infringement.
Fraud on the Copyright Office
Under 17 U.S.C. § 411(b), a copyright applicant's knowing failure to advise the Copyright Office of facts that would have led to a rejection of the application is grounds for holding the registration invalid. This type of allegation of fraud on the Copyright Office can be brought as an affirmative defense to a copyright infringement claim, or as a separate cause of action—the path DC Comics chose in this case.
For its fraud claim, DC Comics argued that Wozniak knew (1) that he was obliged, under 17 U.S.C. § 409(9), to report to the Copyright Office any pre-existing copyrighted material incorporated in his applied-for story, and (2) that he could not use characters and elements of the "Batman Universe" in his story without DC Comics' authorization. However, the court noted that the standard of proving fraud on the Copyright Office is high: DC Comics "must establish that the application for copyright registration is factually inaccurate, that the inaccuracies were willful or deliberate, and that the Copyright Office relied on those misrepresentations."
The court noted that the reporting obligation under 17 U.S.C. § 409(9) did not establish Wozniak's subjective state of mind at the time he filed the application. Wozniak is not a lawyer and did not hire a lawyer to file his copyright application, and DC Comics had no evidence to show that he had a sufficient understanding of the § 409(9) reporting obligation to render his inaccurate statements willful or deliberate.
Judge Engelmayer observed that, while a jury could reasonably infer that Wozniak knew that he lacked authority to use DC Comics' pre-existing material (making his failure to report such material to the Copyright Office a deliberate and willful omission), it could also draw a different inference and find that he did not understand the meaning of the term "pre-existing material" or how it applied to his story.
Remaining "mindful" of the high bar for proving fraud, the court denied DC Comics' motion for summary judgment on this count.
This case is Wozniak v. Warner Bros. Ent. Inc., No. 22 CIV. 8969 (PAE) (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 27, 2024).
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