Mr Viral
A federal judge has denied multiple dismissal motions in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by the Isaac Hayes estate over ‘Hold On, I’m Coming.’ Photo Credit: United Press International / CC by 4.0
A federal judge has rejected a pair of motions to dismiss the infringement complaint filed against Donald Trump and others over Isaac Hayes-penned “Hold On, I’m Coming.”Judge Thomas Thrash Jr. denied the dismissal pushes (and ruled on several other motions) during a recent 50-minute hearing. We’ve covered the underlying copyright complaint, levied by Isaac Hayes Enterprises (which isn’t the sole owner of the appropriate IP; more on this in a moment), since it initiated in August 2024.
Just to recap, the relevant defendants did, in fact, obtain a public performance license. But the Hayes estate says its opposition to the use of Sam & Dave-recorded “Hold On, I’m Coming” at the president’s campaign events caused the work to be excluded from the license.
Also at issue is (among other things) the allegedly unauthorized synchronization of “Hold On, I’m Coming” in various social clips.
On the parties front, the initial action named as defendants President Trump, his campaign, the RNC, the NRA, Turning Point Action, the American Conservative Union, and the entity (BTC) behind the annual Bitcoin conference.
But a December 2024 amended action dropped all defendants save the president, his campaign, Turning Point, and BTC. Meanwhile, the court has now granted a joint request from BTC and the Hayes estate to transfer the case – for BTC only – from Georgia to Tennessee.
Returning to the new rulings, then, the court rejected Turning Point’s motion to dismiss the complaint for lack of standing. However, this defendant further argued that it hadn’t had much at all to do with the alleged infringement – “there are no allegations…that TPA engaged in any wrongful conduct.” The court said the personal-jurisdiction position was “taken under advisement.”
(Without diving too much deeper into the convoluted courtroom confrontation here, the judge also rejected a sanctions motion against Turning Point counsel for, in the Hayes plaintiffs’ words, allegedly filing “a [dismissal] motion riddled with false statements.”)
Additionally, the court denied the Trump legal team’s own motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.Said motion had called into question the ownership particulars of “Hold On, I’m Coming,” in part by taking aim at an alleged 2014 Warner Chappell copyright termination as well as the actual rights of plaintiff Isaac Hayes III, one of Isaac Hayes’ 11 children.
“The problem is that none of these key legal events—the alleged termination of the copyright license based on one-half of the ownership in the Work; the alleged transfer of Isaac Hayes’s rights to Hayes Enterprises; or the agreement between the latter and Primary Wave—is documented,” the president’s legal team wrote. “There is nothing, not a single document: no termination; no assignment; no agreement.”
(The Hayes plaintiffs later pushed back, including by “disclosing the identities of each owner/member of” Isaac Hayes Enterprises, “which happen to be all the known heirs.” Non-party Primary Wave is said to own a quarter of Isaac Hayes’ body of work.)
As to where things go now, discovery will seemingly proceed after the judge (in the second such music industry ruling this week) also denied the defendants’ request to pause the process.
