Donald Trump Relents, Testifies In Eddy Grant’s ‘Electric Avenue’ Copyright Lawsuit

Former US president Donald Trump has complied with a court-ordered deposition, in relation to British-Guyanese singer Eddy Grant’s $300,000 copyright infringement lawsuit, over the use of the superstar’s Reggae-fusion song Electric Avenue, in his 2020 election campaign.

The court order had come in April this year, almost two years after Grant filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Trump, in a federal court in Manhattan.

According to an Insider report, the information was revealed recently, eight months after both Trump and Grant had been directed by the court to testify under oath by June 21, 2022.

“Electric Avenue singer Eddy Grant has accomplished something the January 6 committee and the New York attorney general have failed to do: getting Donald Trump to answer questions at a deposition,” the Insider reported on Monday.

“Trump has sat for at least three other depositions in lawsuits against him this year. He pleaded the Fifth some 400 times when forced to sit for questioning by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was readying a $250 million lawsuit alleging a longstanding pattern of business fraud,” it added.

Grant’s US$300,000 lawsuit was filed in 2020, after Trump’s campaign used Electric Avenue, the singer’s biggest international hit, in a Biden-bashing tweet during his re-election bid in the last US presidential run-offs.

A sample from the song, totalling 40-seconds, had been used as the soundtrack for an animation that was posted to Trump’s Twitter account on August 12, 2020, which taunted “then-candidate Joe Biden, showing him puttering along on a slow-moving hand-car as the Trump campaign barrels by in a high-speed train”, according to The Insider.

The animation which was viewed more than 13.7 million times, was removed a month later, but according to Grant’s lawsuit “the tweet containing the video had been ‘liked’ more than 350,000 times, re-tweeted more than 139,000 times, and had received nearly 50,000 comments”, and had brought the singer’s name into disrepute.

According to the latest Insider report, Grant’s lawyer, Brett Van Benthysen said Trump had been “deposed in this action and “did not object to answering questions about the tweet”.

It said that Trump had been scheduled to be deposed in the case in early April in Van Benthysen’s Manhattan offices where he was to answer questions concerning “the campaign’s access to and control over his Twitter account; the process for the campaign deciding to have him post the tweet, and the “financial or political benefit” which the campaign received, as a result.

However, the publication noted that online court records do not state the date or location where Trump made the deposition.  

The Insider noted that the purpose of Monday’s filing was for Grant’s side to demand a hearing over Trump advisor Dan Scavino’s failure to comply with a subpoena for his own deposition in the lawsuit. 

Grant’s attorney had written in an August 20 court filing, that Scavino’s testimony was being sought as he had reportedly “frequently authored and/or reviewed Trump’s tweets and defendants have represented that Mr. Scavino had a role in the alleged tweet containing the infringing video”.

According to the Insider, Scavino, who is a long-time aide and adviser to Trump, has also fought a House January 6 committee subpoena, for his phone records but that “US District Judge John G. Koeltl set Wednesday, December 21, for a hearing on Scavino’s failure to comply with Grant’s subpoena”.

The report said that attorneys for both Trump and Grant have agreed to a strict gag order in the case and have repeatedly refused to comment on the matter.

As for the infringing tweet, Trump’s team, in its defense, argued that the animation was political satire, and, as a consequence, was exempt from copyright law.  In addition, his attorneys said the campaign team had only “reposted the animation with no idea where it came from” and that he “cannot be sued because of ‘presidential absolute immunity’.

Earlier this year, the Insider quoted court documents as revealing that lawyers for both sides had attempted to work out their disagreement over the song on March 2, during a closed-door settlement conference, before a magistrate, which ended in a stalemate.

Consequently, it said the Manhattan-based federal lawsuit “will instead be moving forward with the taping of depositions by all parties”.

In September last year, Reuters reported that Trump had lost his bid to escape ‘Electric Avenue’ copyright lawsuit for the misuse of the single, after U.S. District Judge John Koeltl ruled that the former president and his campaign had failed to prove “at an early stage of the case” that the video “made fair use of Grant’s song under federal copyright law”. 

The judge had also said that the fair-use factors were all in favour of the Gimme Hope Joanna singer and that the video Trump posted did not “parody the music or transform it in any way,” and that its “overarching political purpose” had not made it “transformative or non-commercial”.

Grant’s then attorney Brian Caplan of Reitler Kailas & Rosenblatt had said in an email that he was “very pleased” with the ruling, as there was “no justification under existing copyright law for a politician to simply appropriate a popular recording and synchronize it in an unrelated video for ostensibly a commercial purpose, cloaked as a political advertisement”.

Electric Avenue was written and recorded by Grant in 1982 and released on his album Killer on the Rampage.

The song which refers to the Electric Avenue in London and the 1981 Brixton Riot, rose to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart spending five weeks in that spot.   It was also certified platinum in the United States, where it was one of the biggest hits of 1983.

In August 2020, Grant had shared a release on his website, noting that he had taken “prompt action against President Donald Trump’s political campaign team”, for the unlawful use of  Electric Avenue in a video criticizing Joe Biden, the Democratic Presidential candidate.

He noted then, that his intellectual property had been encapsulated into derogatory political rhetoric, “further encapsulated in a video production that can only be construed at best as being wicked, thereby causing me considerable emotional distress”.

The statement also noted that on August 13, 2020, Trump’s campaign had been issued a cease and desist letter and that Grant  himself, had described the president’s campaign’s actions as a “flagrant abuse” of his rights as an artist, composer, arranger, producer and owner”.

Additionally, Grant’s attorney at the time, Wallace E. J. Collins had had also said that as a result of Trump’s “wrongful unauthorized Infringing Use in connection with his “controversial political campaign”, substantial damage and irreparable harm had occurred to the singer’s reputation.

Collins had also said that Grant has a reputation for standing for truth and justice for all, which “will be seriously undermined by any affiliation with the name ‘Trump’ in a political context, and described it as a serious transgression which would extend to the value of the singer’s musical catalogue.