Beyoncé's lawyer Tom Ferber has filed a legal motion asking a court to dismiss the case filed against the singer by an Independent filmmaker. In the motion, Ferber stated that the artist's visual album Lemonade did not steal from the Palinoia short film.
According to Billboard, filmmaker Matthew Fulks filed the lawsuit in June and claimed that Beyoncé and her camp, which includes HBO and Sony Music Entertainment, copied a total of nine elements from his 2014 short film to create the Emmy-nominated Lemonade, which premiered on April 23. Some of these included the scenes featuring "red persons with eyes obscured," "graffiti and persons with heads down" and "side-lit ominous figures."
In response, Ferber forwarded a motion to the Southern District Court of New York and maintained that his client's visual album did not violate any copyright laws.
"A straightforward comparison of the parties' works provides a textbook example of what does not constitute a legally cognizable claim if infringement," the motion states. "The SAC describes elements and features of the works in abstractions to 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."
Ferber also maintained that the context of Palinoia and Lemonade are very different. He explained that the short film focuses on the story of a white man who is suffering from the effects of his broken relationship while Beyoncé's work is about an African-American woman going through different stages of anger, suspicion and denial, TMZ reported.
Fulks has not yet released a statement to respond to the motion submitted by Ferber. However, their legal camps are expected to meet for a court hearing scheduled on Aug. 25.
