You didn't show us the most crucial thing:
What is in @formats, @topics, @info_type?

From the looks of the error messages it looks to me like the arrays might be empty, or contain information that would confuse the method which constructs the queries.

If you pass the array reference, you need to put in a list of values that you want to search for. If you want to put in a comparison operator and a value, than you need to pass a hash reference.

What happens if you put in just one of those parameters, and print out it's values (to make sure the array is properly constructed) just before the call?