A jury has ruled that Walt Disney Studios has infringed on the intellectual property rights of visual effects firm Rearden when making the 2017 film Beauty and the Beast, according to TheWrap.
What’s Happening:
- A jury has ruled that Walt Disney Studios failed to properly license visual effects technology owned by Rearden, using it without permission in the 2017 film Beauty and the Beast, awarding the visual effects firm $600,000.
- According to the ruling, Disney had failed to properly license the MOVA Contour technology, owned by Rearden, despite knowing that their visual effects partner, DD3, may not have had rights to use or sublicense the software.
- MOVA Contour Reality Capture, introduced in 2006, was designed from the ground up to capture deformable surfaces (like faces, hands and cloth), enabling it to pick up the detailed performance of the human body with unprecedented realism.
- MOVA Contour was first used on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) by Digital Domain for Brad Pitt's reverse-aging facial effects, resulting in an Academy Award. Notably, Brad Pitt was also nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for best actor for the “Benjamin Button” role, which was the first time a largely computer-generated facial performance had reached that level of acclaim.
- The ruling also stated that Disney continued to benefit from using the proprietary system in the 2017 live-action remake of the classic 1991 animated film of the same name.
- Rearden had reportedly originally asked for over $100 million in damages related to the film’s success, but the jury’s award also indicated that they did not see a strong connection between the MOVA Contour system and the film’s box office performances.
- A prior federal court decision already found that DD3’s licensure and ownership transfer of MOVA Contour was fraudulent. While Disney was not party to that ruling, a subsequent case may still be brought over the two Avengers films released following that initial judgment.
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