A Judge Refuses to Dismiss Eddy Grant’s Copyright Claim Against Trump Over His Campaign’s Use of ‘Electric Avenue’
A judge in New York has declined to dismiss Eddy Grant’s copyright infringement lawsuit against Donald Trump over the use of the former’s track ‘Electric Avenue’ in one of the latter’s campaign videos last year. Team Trump claimed that their use of the song was ‘transformative’ and therefore covered by the ‘fair use’ principle in US copyright law, but judge John G Koeltl has concluded that the former President is yet to demonstrate that his use of Grant’s track was, in fact, fair use.
Countless artists complained about Trump using their songs and recordings during his original presidential campaign and subsequent presidency, of course, though usually those complaints related to music being played at rallies and other political events.
In that context, Trump wouldn’t usually need specific permission to play any one track providing his campaign and/or the venue hosting any one event had a blanket licence from the relevant collecting societies, like ASCAP and BMI. Songs can technically be excluded from those licences when it’s a political event, though the Trump presidency was in its latter phase by the time artists started trying to employ that technicality.
