US court dismisses film studios’ copyright motions

A US court has dismissed Disney’s, 20th Century Fox’s and Paramount’s motion to dismiss copyright infringement claims made against the companies.

The US District Court for the Northern District of California published its decision yesterday, June 18.

In July 2017, US-based technology company Rearden sued 20th Century Fox, Disney and Paramount for copyright infringement over the use of motion capture technology. Rearden also sued Disney for patent infringement.

The technology, called MOVA Contour Reality Capture, is used to create a 3D-animated image in a movie or video games by capturing an actor’s or character’s performance frame-by-frame. It has been used in the recent blockbuster successes “Deadpool”, “The Avengers” and “Guardians of the Galaxy”.

Rearden alleged that the film companies’ special effects vendor, visual effects company Digital Domain 3.0 (DD3), directly infringed the Mova Contour program’s copyright. DD3 is used by Disney, Paramount and 20th Century Fox.

Rearden’s computer program is subject of US copyright registration number TXu001977151. The company alleged that the DD3 technology did not have the right to offer or provide services using the same technology as the Mova Contour. 

Mova Contour is also protected by US patent numbers 7,605,861, 8,659,668, 7,548,272, 7,567,293, and 8,207,963.

In February, the district court dismissed Rearden’s copyright infringement claims against Disney, while dismissing Disney’s motion to throw out claims of patent infringement.

However, Rearden filed amended complaints in March. Disney, 20th Century Fox and Paramount moved for partial dismissal of the first amended complaint.

The defendants argued that Rearden’s secondary copyright claims for vicarious and contributory copyright infringement and its amended direct patent infringement claims should be dismissed.

According to the defendants, they are not liable for DD3’s use of unlicensed software because Rearden did not plausibly allege the studios had the contractual right to stop or limit the allegedly infringing conduct.

The court supported Rearden’s argument that the studios could have ended the alleged infringement by cancelling the use of the MOVA program and that they were able to “police” DD3’s infringing acts.

The court denied the defendants’ motions to dismiss the vicarious and contributory copyright claims as a result.

When considering patent infringement, the court said the infringing party must control the system as a whole and obtain benefit from it. This required the party to use each and every element of the patent.

The district court ruled that Rearden failed to demonstrate that Disney was in possession of any of the elements of the Mova Contour system.

The court granted with prejudice Disney’s motion to dismiss the direct patent infringement claims.