UEFA accused of plagiarism in the Champions League - Copyright dispute over ‘Beauty and the Beast’

UEFA accused of trade secrets theft and plagiarism in the Champions League

The draw for the 2024/25 Champions League, which took place on 26 August in Monaco, set the calendar for the games to be played in this competition for the season. In addition to the usual excitement this event brings, this year's event has been marked by a controversy. The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has been accused of plagiarism by the Chilean consultant Leandro Shara, who claims to be the true creator of the new competition format, which was based on his ideas and technologies without his consent.

Indeed, UEFA changed the competition format this year, abandoning the classical group format and in its stead opting for a league format in which each team will play 8 games against different opponents and a general classification from which the top teams progress to the next stage of the competition. According to UEFA, this new format would have made the traditional drawing process unbearably long. To make the process more flexible and dynamic, UEFA has opted for a special automated software that randomly selects eight opponents for each team from four pots and determines whether the matches will be played at home or away.

According to Shara, the system used in the new Champions League format is not an original idea of UEFA, but was developed by him and presented to several high-ranking officials of the organisation, including UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin, only to be told that UEFA would not be using this system. Shara therefore demands that he be recognised as the inventor of the drawing format. Moreover, the Chilean consultant claims that his intellectual property and algorithm are recognized by FIFA. In addition to restructuring the competition, Shara points out that this new format will bring significant economic benefits to UEFA,  and also claims that these financial aspects were part of his original proposal, thus supporting his accusation that UEFA obtained the format dishonestly.

The UEFA has not made any official statement on the claims yet, but the issue is expected to be a topic of discussion off the pitch in the coming weeks.

Copyright dispute over ‘Beauty and the Beast’: Walt Disney not liable for contractor’s copyright infringement

Walt Disney's live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, released in 2017 and starring Emma Watson, became involved in a legal dispute after the visual effects company Rearden LLC filed several lawsuits a few months after the film's release, on the grounds that Disney was working with Digital Domain 3.0, a company that was using its motion capture technology MOVA Contour without authorisation. This technology allows to capture human faces and create computer-generated characters. In using this technology to animate the Beast character, played by Dan Stevens, Rearden claimed that its copyright the software had been infringed and that Disney was indirectly liable for this infringement.

The dispute centred on whether Disney knew that Digital Domain did not have the proper license to use this technology, and whether it had the legal and practical capacity to stop the infringement from happening. In late 2023, a California district court ruled that Disney was indirectly liable because its collaborator had infringed Rearden's copyrights, leading to an order for $600,000, around €542.000, in damages. However, on 26 August, the federal court in California overturned this ruling. The judge Jon Tigar, who presided over the case, pointed out that there was insufficient evidence to prove that Disney had the ability to identify or control potential copyright infringement by its suppliers. Therefore Disney could not be held indirectly liable for those infringements.