Business News Legal

Beyonce hits back at film-maker’s ‘Lemonade’ rip off claims

By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 26 July 2016

Can everyone please take note that Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ film is in no way similar to the short film ‘Palinioa’? And even if it is, those similarities in no way constitute anything even nearing copyright infringement.

Not my plea, ladies and gentleman, but those of the lawyer representing the singer and her company Parkwood Entertainment, who were sued in June by independent filmmaker and ‘Palinioa’ director Matthew Fulks.

He says that various elements of the film that accompanied Beyonce’s most recent album are taken from his work, including ‘graffiti and persons with heads down”, “red persons with eyes obscured”, “parking garage”, “feet on the street” and “side-lit ominous figures”. Basically, says Fulks, Beyonce nicked the “total concept and feel” of his short for her mini-film and its trailer.

But not so says lawyer Tom Ferber, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Yes, the two films both document “a distressed lover’s pain”, but a common theme, and any other stylistic similarities there may or may not be, do not constitute copyright infringement.

Says he in a legal filing: “A straightforward comparison of the parties’ works provides a textbook example of what does not constitute a legally cognisable claim of infringement”. He adds that Fulks legal claim “describes elements and features of the works in abstractions so broad as to be meaningless – because, as even a cursory review of the parties’ works makes clear, at the level of copyrightable expression the works are markedly dissimilar”.

Team Beyonce want the case dismissed forthwith. A court hearing is now set for 25 Aug.