Isaac Hayes Enterprises v. Trump is a copyright infringement case in the Northern District of Georgia that was allowed to proceed, in part, against defendant Donald J. Trump — but claims against a political action committee called Turning Point Action (“TPA”) were dismissed.
Isaac Hayes Enterprises is the entity that manages the rights of legendary singer, songwriter, and cultural icon Isaac Hayes Jr., who died in 2008. The CEO of Hayes Enterprises is Isaac Hayes III, and the rights to Hayes’s songs are held in part by him and his father’s widow. This lawsuit was initiated because those stakeholders took exception with then-candidate Trump’s use of the song “Hold On, I’m Comin’” at his rallies. By the plaintiff’s count, the song was used 133 times at these rallies, even after plaintiffs counsel sent a cease-and-desist letter to the campaign.
Trump answered by calling in question the ownership of the rights to the song, alleging that Hayes’s record company was the actual owner, and therefore the lawsuit had to be dismissed. The court noted that the plaintiff took advantage of the Copyright Act’s rule that allows rightsholders to cancel assignments of rights within a certain window – here, 56 years after the copyright was originally secured. The plaintiff was well aware of that opportunity, and codified it by sending a notice to the Copyright Office via registered mail, with return receipt, in 2017, five years before the window to cancel assignments took effect. The court found no defects with the plaintiff’s actions.
When the 56-year period ended in 2022, Hayes Enterprises, Hayes’s widow and Hayes’s son terminated all transfers of copyright, as the widow and son had notified the Copyright Office of their intent to do so five years earlier. The court noted that the 56-year rule applies only to statutory heirs, and no one else. (So, Hayes Enterprises was not required to have provided notice that it would exercise the right to terminate.) In this case, that meant Hayes’s son and widow (as statutory heirs) now had a controlling interest in the rights, as their combined share was over 51%, and they properly assigned those rights to Hayes Enterprises. The court found the plaintiff had met its burden of establishing standing for the claim of direct copyright infringement.
Hayes Enterprises also sued TPA for contributory infringement, alleging that as the event planner and promoter it had control over the rallies. The court found this part of plaintiff’s claims was unpersuasive, noting that in order for contributory infringement to be applied to TPA, it would have had to control the choice of music rather than just set up the speakers and rally locations. Critically, TPA would have to derive a financial benefit from the copyright infringement, which was not the case. So, the court granted TPA’s motion to dismiss.
The court also found that Trump was trying to challenge the assignment, from the heirs to Hayes Enterprises, by inserting himself into a contract to which he was not a party. Rather, only the two parties to the assignment could object to whether it was properly done. That meant the defendants could not make any arguments about the assignment of rights, or Hayes Enterprises’ standing to bring the lawsuit.
Not surprisingly, the plaintiff’s Lanham Act claim of a false association of Hayes with the campaign was thrown out by the court, as was the common law claim of right of publicity. The court said both failed because there was no mention of Isaac Hayes’s name being used anywhere in the promotion or the event itself. It had been widely established, the court said, that simply playing the music of an artist did not constitute a false association or violate a person’s right of publicity.
The lawsuit was green-lit to go ahead with the direct infringement claim surviving motion practice. It might be worth noting that civil liabilities cannot be pardoned.
