Stoneham screenwriter sues Warner Bros. over upcoming movie he says mirrors his own

Well, I can only go by what they tell me.

Here is the US Copyright Office telling me that you cannot copyright a name or title: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ34.pdf

The US Patent and Trademark Office has section 1202.08 of the Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure, which tells me that "The title, or a portion of a title, of a single creative work must be refused registration under §§1, 2, and 45 of the Trademark Act, 15 U.S.C. §§1051, 1052, and 1127, unless the title has been used on a series of creative works." And then gets into the details of what does and doesn't qualify. The rationale tends to put the kibosh on trying the same thing for unregistered federal marks.

The appearance or other distinguishing characteristics of a fictional character may or may not be copyrightable, depending on just what they are. One of the seminal cases on that was Nichols v. Universal Pictures, and it tells me: "But we do not doubt that two plays may correspond in plot closely enough for infringement. How far that correspondence must go is another matter. Nor need we hold that the same may not be true as to the characters, quite independently of the "plot" proper, though, as far as we know, such a case has never arisen. If Twelfth Night were copyrighted, it is quite possible that a second comer might so closely imitate Sir Toby Belch or Malvolio as to infringe, but it would not be enough that for one of his characters he cast a riotous knight who kept wassail to the discomfort of the household, or a vain and foppish steward who became amorous of his mistress. These would be no more than Shakespeare's "ideas" in the play, as little capable of monopoly as Einstein's Doctrine of Relativity, or Darwin's theory of the Origin of Species. It follows that the less developed the characters, the less they can be copyrighted; that is the penalty an author must bear for marking them too indistinctly." (emphasis mine)

As for copyright registration, I never said that copyrights were not granted automatically (when they are granted). What I said was that you generally cannot sue for copyright infringement unless you have registered. Or at least, that's what 17 USC 411(a) tells me. (And section 412 tells me that some of the best remedies are reserved for people who registered in a timely fashion.)

Regarding the quality of the work, you're right that copyright and trademark don't care if the things they apply to are any good or not. (Trademarks do care about consistency, but consistently bad is fine) I wonder why you mentioned though, since I never said anything about it.

And lastly, while you're also right that independent creation is a valid way to attack a plaintiff's prima facie case of infringement (though it's hard to pull off in practice sometimes) there was a lawsuit in which DC, the publisher of Superman comics sued Fawcett, the publisher of Captain Marvel comics (Captain Marvel was the superhero who said Shazam to change from Billy Batson and back again, Shazam was the name of the wizard who gave him his powers). The gist of the suit was that the Captain Marvel books infringed on the Superman books. DC won, and that's why there were no Captain Marvel comics for a long time. Ironically, DC wound up buying the rights and revived the series themselves, but in the meantime, Marvel comics had taken the Captain Marvel trademark for a series of comic books, which is why modern DC comics featuring their Captain Marvel use different titles, like Shazam.

Anyway, good irony there, man.