A federal jury in California has ordered The Walt Disney Co. to pay nearly $600,000 to a special effects company that sued the studio for using its motion capture technology in its 2017 live-action remake of “Beauty and the Beast.”
The jury determined that Disney used software from Reardon LLC’s MOVA Contour software to render the face of the beast without permission. More than $250,000 was awarded in actual damages but the jury also recommended that Disney award Reardon more than $345,000 in profits, according to Reuters.
The verdict comes more than six years after Reardon, which was founded by former Apple scientist Steve Perlman, initiated legal action against Disney. The company accused a former employee of stealing Contour’s IP and using it at Digital Domain. 3.0, which contracted with Disney to use the facial-capture software.
Disney countered Contour’s accusations, saying that Rearden did not own the software's copyright during the production of "Beauty and the Beast."
A Disney spokesperson told Reuters the company was "gratified that the jury properly rejected Rearden’s request for $38 million in profits" from the movie.
Rearden has similar lawsuits against Paramount and Disney's 20th Century Fox—litigation on those cases has been on hiatus while the "Beauty and the Beast" case worked its way through the courts.
