Disney receives mixed fortunes in IP infringement case
A US court has rejected a claim of copyright infringement against Disney, but also dismissed the company’s motion to throw out claims of patent infringement.
The US District Court for the Northern District of California published its decision on Wednesday, February 21.
In July 2017, California-based technology company Rearden filed patent, copyright, and trademark infringement claims against Disney over the use of its Mova Contour Reality Capture technology.
The case was filed at the Northern District of California’s San Francisco Division.
The program captures the motion of the face to create images used in motion pictures. It captures an actor’s performance frame-by-frame to create “original contour program output files based on the performance, frame-by-frame”.
The Mova Contour methods and systems are protected by US patent numbers 7,605,861, 8,659,668, 7,548,272, 7,567,293, and 8,207,963.
In March 2017, Disney released its live-action “Beauty and the Beast” movie, which used Mova Contour to create the Beast, played by actor Dan Stevens.
However, Rearden alleged that the technology used in the movie was through a contract with a company that had stolen the technology.
Of the success of the movie, Rearden said in its original claim: “Nowhere is it mentioned that the patented and copyright-protected Mova Contour technology was stolen from its inventor and developer, Rearden LLC, and its owner Rearden Mova LLC.”
Rearden alleged that although Disney had previously contracted to use the technology with Rearden, Disney obtained the technology through a contract with “thieves” for “Beauty and the Beast”.
In regards to the claim of copyright infringement, Disney argued that Rearden’s copyright claims fail because Rearden “cannot show that the copyright in the software program extends to the output files; and even if it could, Rearden cannot show that the CG [computer graphics] characters or the movies are derivative works of the film”.
In response, Rearden said that the Mova program performs all the operations in creating the output, and that this is enough to plead a plausible claim that Rearden is the author of the output.
While the court recognised that Mova does a significant amount of work to transform the 2D information into 3D captured surface and tracking mesh outputs, this cannot be enough to support the claim since all computer programs take inputs and turn them into outputs. It also acknowledged that the director and actor play a significant role in giving life to the animation.
The claims of copyright infringement were dismissed without prejudice.
Rearden alleged that the company that stole the technology directly infringed one or more of the Mova patents without authorisation. It also alleged that Disney “had knowledge of, or was wilfully blind to, the ‘861 patent”. Disney claimed that Rearden has no basis to allege direct infringement.
The court ruled that any direct infringement claims are dismissed without prejudice, although it found that Rearden sufficiently alleged active inducement, and therefore the motion to dismiss the indirect inducement claims was denied.
Rearden is also suing Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount Pictures on the same claims.
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