The Court of Appeal has ruled that a film company's claim for unjust enrichment against two companies involved in making Rogue One: A Star Wars Story should be struck out, overturning earlier rulings that the claim should proceed to trial.

The actor Peter Cushing appeared in the original Star Wars film. In 1993, he was engaged by the film company to appear in a TV film. As he was terminally ill, the agreement stipulated that the film company could use doubles, stand-ins, special effects and other methods in order to complete the film. The agreement also stated that if the film were not made, his likeness could not be recreated using such methods in another film or programme without the film company's consent. In the event, the film was not made.

In 2016, Mr Cushing's estate gave the makers of Rogue One permission to use his likeness. This was achieved by altering the appearance of another actor using digital special effects. When the film company discovered that the makers of Rogue One were intending to do this, it claimed that it had suffered substantial losses as a result, including deprivation of the commercial benefit of making the first film posthumously starring Mr Cushing. No agreement was reached, and the film company brought an unjust enrichment claim.

The makers of Rogue One applied to have the claim struck out. The application was rejected by a Master, who found that it was not possible to say that the claim was certain to fail or was entirely fanciful. After that decision was upheld by the High Court, the makers of Rogue One appealed to the Court of Appeal.

In the Court's view, there was no legal basis for the film company's claim that the makers of Rogue One were directly enriched at its expense because there was a direct transfer to them of the rights granted to it in the 1993 agreement. It was impossible to identify anything belonging to the film company that could be said to have been transferred. All that it had acquired under the agreement was a positive contractual right to use various methods to supplement Mr Cushing's performance in the TV film and a negative contractual right to stop others from doing so if the film were not made. The positive right was solely for the purpose of making the film and it was impossible to characterise what had happened as a transfer of the film company's right to 'resurrect' Mr Cushing in order to make it. Similarly, what had happened could not be described as a transfer of the film company's negative right to prevent the use of Mr Cushing's likeness in any of the ways specified in the agreement. The argument that there had been a transfer because Mr Cushing's estate had wrongfully exercised that right was rejected: the estate had not exercised any right belonging to the film company but rather had, at most, breached the obligations owed under the agreement.

The film company also argued that the makers of Rogue One had been indirectly enriched at its expense, in the sense that the benefit they had received arose through 'a series of coordinated transactions'. However, the Court observed that the relevant transactions were separated by 23 years and had not together effected a transfer of value: nothing of relevance had left the film company under the 1993 agreement. The film company's claim was struck out.