The Dark Knight Won’t Share His Likeness With European Soccer Team

According to a report from Sports Illustrated, La Liga football club Valencia will abandon its new logo following an objection from DC Comics.  Last week, Valencia filed a trademark application for its re-designed bat logo.  DC Comics filed an objection to the application, claiming that the logo looked too similar to the crest of the Dark Knight himself.

As you can see, the two logos are similar in that they are both black in color and resemble a bat.  Beyond that, we here at Abnormal Use fail to see how the proposed logo will cause much confusion.  We seriously doubt the Valencia logo, with its soft lines and rounded ears, would strike much fear in Gotham’s criminals.  Certainly, even though the most amateur Batman fan could easily point out the differences.

An interesting component to this trademark suit is trying to decipher just which Batman logo Valencia is allegedly infringing. The Batman symbol has evolved over the years.  The comparison (shown above) used by Sports Illustrated and other media outlets reporting on the story compares the Valencia logo to the Dark Knight logo released in 2008.  Perhaps DC Comics’ complaints would make more sense had they focused on the logo from the 1999 “Batman Beyond” animated series:

At least with the 1999 logo, the wings are in the same position as that of the Valencia logo.  This trademark lawsuit would be one we could understand. In any event, Valencia has used a bat in its official team crest since 1922.  The City of Valencia has incorporated a bat in its coat of arms for even longer.  Batman didn’t emerge until 1939.  The bat logos for each have undergone a number of changes through the years, but for whatever reason, this is the first time DC Comics saw a problem.