What do Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Beast of "Beauty and the Beast" fame and the raunchiest and richest movie superhero ever have in common?
They're all characters in movies that are named in a growing series of recent suits filed by San Mateo visual effects firm Rearden Inc., which is owned by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Perlman. They come on the heels of similar filings last week against the Walt Disney Co. and Mandeville Films for using the technology on "Beauty and the Beast" and Marvel Films for "Guardians of the Galaxy" and "Avengers: Age of Ultron."
The suits filed Monday claim that the company's MOVA Contour Reality Capture motion picture technology, invented by Perlman, was used by Paramount Pictures in producing "Terminator Genisys" and Twentieth Century Fox on "Deadpool," despite the studios knowing that the technology and equipment was stolen.
Video game producer Crystal Dynamics was named in a separate suit Monfor utilizing the technology on "Rise of Tomb Raider." The suits targeting the studios were filed by a team of attorneys led by Steve Berman and Mark Carlson from Seattle-based Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro. They are seeking orders to destroy all infringing copies, in addition to financial damages.
Fox's "Deadpool," the saga of a potty-mouthed anti-superhero, is the highest-grossing R-rated film ever, and took in $363 million domestically and $783 million worldwide in 2016. "Terminator Genisys," which featured Schwarzenegger's title character battling a younger version of himself, brought in $88 million domestically and $441 million worldwide in 2016.
Since 2015, Rearden has been involved in legal battles against Digital Domain and its affiliates over MOVA, claiming that a former employee, Greg LaSalle stole the technology and unlawfully sold it to Digital Domain, a Los Angeles-based visual effects firm.
In June 2016, a federal judge granted Rearden a preliminary injunction preventing Digital Domain from continuing to use MOVA pending a ruling in a trial that was held in December in Los Angeles. In that case, Rearden claimed that Digital Domain did not have the rights to sell the MOVA rights to China's Virtual Global Holdings, nor did that firm have the right to sell them to another Chinese company, Shenzhen Haiticheng Science and Technology.
Prior to that, Digital Domain provided the technology and the system was used in Paramount Pictures' "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," Warner Bros.' "Gravity" and Disney's "Tron."