“Avengers: Infinity War”
Marvel/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Courtesy of Everett Collection
The Walt Disney Co. is locked in a long-running battle at the intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley over the use of allegedly stolen VFX technology to animate some of the company's most iconic characters in its highest-grossing films. The company avoided claims in a lawsuit that was part of an ongoing lawsuit. .
A federal judge on Thursday ruled that Rearden's copyright infringement claims could not be substantiated, ruling that Rearden's lauded VFX technology was widely used in the production of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. was rejected. The court deferred ruling on whether Disney infringed the VFX company's patents.
At the center of the case: DD3, the company Disney partnered with on “Beauty and the Beast,'' “Guardians of the Galaxy,'' and multiple “Avengers'' series, owns technology that allegedly played a key role in the production. There are allegations that it may not have been of the movie. A complex ownership chain involving bankruptcy and misselling effectively created confusion over ownership and licensing of MOVA Contour Reality Capture.
Last year, an Oakland jury found that Disney infringed on Rearden's intellectual property when it used copyrighted technology to animate the characters in “Beauty and the Beast.” But the payout was minimal, and after finding that Disney knew it may have been using MOVA Contour inappropriately, it continued to use it nonetheless. awarded the company approximately $600,000 in damages. Part of the judgment, approximately $350,000, was aimed at recouping profits from the use of the technology. Disney stands to lose more than $100 million in this lawsuit, alleging that the film's box office success was due to the VFX work done by MOVA.
Regarding the alleged use of the same technology in “Avengers: Infinity War'' and “Avengers: Endgame,'' the claim that Disney is liable not only for patent infringement but also vicarious copyright infringement and contributory copyright infringement remains undecided. is. Huge damages are at issue, with Disney facing the prospect of being stripped of profits from films that grossed more than $6 billion.
Allegations of copyright infringement have called into question MOVA's contribution to the film.
Tiger last year faced a lawsuit from Rearden, which concluded that the company's copyright and patent infringement claims could not be substantiated because there was no evidence that its VFX technology played much of a role in creating certain CG characters. was rejected. He found that directors could be “authors of the facial motion he captures.”
In his amended complaint, Rearden points to new evidence that DD3 had a computer file recording a capture of Mark Ruffalo, who played the Hulk in the Avengers series, and that contained a “Rearden copyright notice''. It pointed out that it contained “a significant amount of copied MOVA source code that is protected by “. within the software.
Tigger was unconvinced that the file substantiated Rearden's claim that it was used to move the Hulk. He stressed that Mr. Rearden was unable to identify the date of creation of the file or any other indication of the purpose of making the film.
Rearden's claim is that DD3 manipulated MOVA or copied MOVA's source code into the output file, enough to warrant a plausible inference that MOVA was “extensively used in the production of Infinity War and Endgame.'' ,” the order states.
Mr. Rearden's new claims are not sufficient to support his claim that DD3 engaged in direct copyright infringement, so Mr. Tigger is holding Disney liable for the secondary copyright infringement claims at this stage of the litigation. concluded that it cannot be held liable. He also said that the court will decide whether to grant the patent infringement claim after going through a process to determine the scope and meaning of the patent claims.
The judge granted Rearden another opportunity to amend the complaint to cure the copyright infringement claims, stating that Rearden had not yet received certain documents owned by DD3. “The court will therefore give Rearden one final opportunity to remedy its copyright infringement claims, but Rearden must be willing to:” [its] Workarounds without caveats and/or with additional details explaining their rationale [its] Faith,” he wrote.
