I guess the Justices weren’t in the mood to hear from lawyers dressed in cowls and capes. The Supreme Court declined to hear arguments and thus affirmed the ruling of the lower court dismissing a case against Warner Bros. over the use of the term “clean slate” in the final installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.

In 2012, Warner Bros. released The Dark Knight Rises which featured Selina Kyle (Catwoman) exchanging her burglary skills in exchange for a software program called “the clean slate” which would erase all traces of Kyle’s criminal past. I won’t spoil the ending to the movie, like the Seventh Circuit did in its detailed decision, but the program plays a vital role in the film. Well apparently there is a real program and registered trademark, CLEAN SLATE, that did not give permission for the use of the mark in the film.

Fortres Grand Corporation develops and sells a security software program that wipes away any user’s changes to a shared computer; the program is used at schools, libraries or hotels to keep public computers functioning properly and free of private data. In association with this program, the CLEAN SLATE trademark was registered in 2001. Fortres claims that after the film was released, there was a significant decline in sales of its software and made the claim that potential customers may have stopped purchasing the software because they believed it was illicit or phony.

Fortres sued Warner Bros. for trademark infringement and unfair competition. The District Court dismissed the case for failure to state a claim concluding that Fortres had not alleged a plausible theory of consumer confusion and Warner Bros. was protected by the First Amendment. The Appeals Court affirmed stating that Warner Bros. put out no such merchandise using “the clean slate” and that only confusion would come from the movie and the real product and the court found that it would be implausible to confuse two such dissimilar products.

Fortres still wasn’t done as it took the case all the way to the Supreme Court. Fortres wanted the Supreme Court to hear arguments on the case but the court declined to weigh in on the matter. By not granting review, the Supreme Court, in essence, affirms the decision of the lower court and appeals court. This is the end of the road for this dispute and Fortres’ claims of trademark infringement are all wiped out.