What’s the price of using unlicensed VFX tech? In Disney’s case, it will cost $345,098!
Rearden LLC’s legal action against Disney is just one of the company’s cases regarding the use of the MOVA motion capture program. It also had disputes with Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount Pictures for Deadpool and Terminator: Genisys.
According to Loeb & Loeb, LLP, while some of the claims were initially dismissed, the infringement dispute kept rolling. Although it took almost six years, Disney’s role in this lawsuit was finally resolved.
Disney’s oopsie used MOVA in the 2017 Beauty and the Beast live-action remake. As I’m not exactly up to speed on this software and how its use constitutes infringement, I’ll rely on the following explanation:
“According to plaintiffs, Disney contracted with Rearden to operate the MOVA program in the past, performed due diligence concerning Rearden’s rights to the intellectual property of the MOVA program, and thus knew of Rearden’s patents. Later, Disney allegedly contracted with DD3 to perform these services, performed due diligence on DD3’s rights to the intellectual property, and knew or should have known that DD3 was not authorized to operate the MOVA program. By contracting with DD3 to provide these services despite this knowledge, Disney allegedly possessed the specific intent to encourage infringement by DD3. Drawing all inferences in plaintiffs’ favor, the court found that Rearden’s allegations, although ‘inarguably thin,’ were enough to survive a motion to dismiss.“
Although it originally sounded like an uphill battle for Rearden LLC, it all culminated in an award this week. Courthouse News reports that Disney cut down the original $38M claim, showing that Beauty and the Beasts’s success was due to more than just the mo-cap SFX. In essence, fans of the 1991 original were going to see the movie no matter how the CGI looked … which was true.
[Source: Courthouse News]
[Source: Loeb & Loeb, LLP]
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