NEW YORK, March 28 — Warner Bros Entertainment didn’t steal the plot for its 2022 blockbuster The Batman from a writer who created a story about the caped crusader three decades earlier, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled on Wednesday.

US District Judge Paul Engelmayer also said the writer Christopher Wozniak infringed copyrights belonging to DC Comics, which employed him as a freelance artist in 1990 when he wrote The Ultimate Riddle, later retitled The Blind Man’s Hat.