Rearden LLC v. Walt Disney Co.

Now before the Court are the consolidated motions to dismiss by all the defendants in these three consolidated cases. The Court will grant the motions in part and deny them in part.

I. BACKGROUND

This action centers on the MOVA Contour Reality Capture Program ("MOVA Contour" or "MOVA"), which-as the name suggests-is a program for capturing the motion of the human face to create images used in motion pictures. Unlike previous motion capture technologies, the MOVA Contour Program "precisely captures and tracks the 3D shape and motion of a human face to sub-millimeter precision." No. 17-cv-04006 JST ECF No. 1 ("Disney Compl.") ¶ 22; No. 17-cv-04191 JST ECF No. 1 ("Fox Compl.") ¶ 22; No. 17-cv-04192 JST ECF No. 1 ("Paramount Compl.") ¶ 20. The MOVA Contour system captures "an actor's performance frame-by-frame, and then creates original Contour Program output files based on the performance, frame-by-frame." Disney Compl. ¶ 27; Fox Compl. ¶ 27; Paramount Compl. ¶ 25. The output files can be used for many different applications, such as "retargeting" the actor's face onto another real or fictional face. Disney Compl. ¶ 33; Fox Compl. ¶ 36; Paramount Compl. ¶ 34.

In many ways, this…