3 Count: Disney Reversal

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1: Disney Wins Bid to Overturn $600k ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Copyright Verdict

First off today, Blake Brittain at Reuters reports that Disney has convinced a federal judge to overturn a $600,000 jury verdict against them, saying that Disney had no way to know its contractor was using copyright infringing technology.

Rearden, who holds the copyright to the Contour software system, filed the lawsuit. Contour captures actor faces to turn them into animated works. According to Rearden, Digital Domain infringed on their software when creating a competing product. Rearden then alleges that Disney partnered with Digital Domain to perform the motion capture for the 2017 version of Beauty and the Beast.

A jury in the case awarded Readern $600,000 over the infringement. However, that was far less than the $1.25 billion Rearden had sought. Now that $600,000 judgment has been overturned as well, with the judge ruling that the jury never should have found Disney liable. According to the judge, Disney could not have learned that Digital Domain was infringing Rearden software, meaning they can’t be held liable.

2: Pirate Streaming Giants Fboxz, AniWave, Zoroxtv & Others Dead in Major Collapse

Next up today, Ernesto Van der Sar at Torrentfreak writes that more than half a dozen major movie piracy sites have been shuttered. There is no confirmation as to why, but it is widely suspected that police action in Vietnam may be resopnsible.

Recently, the pirate site Fmovies shuttered its doors, but many of its sister sites or clones remained online. Now, at least half a dozen of those sites have also shuttered, posting messages indicating their closure.

No one has claimed credit for the closures. However, at least one of the sites uses the exact verbiage as 123Movies, which was shuttered by Viatnamese law enforcement more than six years ago. This raises suspicion that law enforcement action has resulted in the sites’ abrupt closures.

3: Aviator LLC Wins $330 Million Trademark and Copyright Claim against Gaming Operators Spribe OÜ and Adjarabet

Finally today, a press release by Aviator states that the company won a $330 million judgment against Spribe OÜ over trademark and copyright infringement.

Aviator LLC is a gaming company that uses the name and logo to represent various gaming products. They claim that Spribe OÜ registered the mark without permission in the country of Georgia and then used it for online gaming websites.

According to the press release, a court in Georgia has found that Spribe OÜ infringed not only the trademark in the logo but also the copyright. As such, the court handed down the judgment and invalidated the mark registered by Spribe OÜ.

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