The Watchmen copyright squabbles plaguing Fox and Warner Bros. will go in front of a judge next year on Jan. 6, exactly two months before the graphic novel adaptation is scheduled to open in the US. The good news for Warners and the fanboy community mouthbreathing in anticipation: Fox's quest to block the film's release is unlikely to come through that close to opening day — which in turn relegates that Wolverine boycott/piracy revenge threat to the Dustbin of Unnecessary Ideas once and for all. Alas, a trial date means someone's probably getting busted — which is where the bad news comes in.Fox remains confident in its charge that producer Larry Gordon did not fully pay to reclaim the studio's Watchmen rights before shopping them to Universal, Paramount and, finally, Warner Bros., which greenlit the project with Zack Snyder after the success of the director's 300. And while we are no lawyers, having been disbarred months ago for our special brand of vigilante justice, shouldn't this be an open-and-shut case? If the terms are in writing and Warners' only apparent defense is that Fox sat by and waited until the film was finished shooting before raising objections, we sense the judge will have even more specific ideas of how restitution might be achieved. And it will feature numbers with many zeroes left of the decimal point. That Harry Potter bump looks more purposeful every day.