Trump loses ‘Electric Avenue’ copyright lawsuit.

“That’s all we asked for,” Grant’s attorney Brett Van Benthysen told Business Insider. – One hundred percent.

Grant, a British citizen living in Barbados, has been informed of the decision, said another of his lawyers, Brian Caplan.

“Mr. Grant believes the ruling will help other artists and copyright owners defend themselves against similar infringements,” Caplan said.

“This is a complete victory for the plaintiffs in terms of liability. The plaintiffs will seek attorneys’ fees in the later damages phase,” he added.

It remained unclear Friday night whether the parties will agree to damages among themselves or go to trial and let a jury pick a number.

“Either it will be a damages-only trial, presumably before a jury, or we could settle for a no-trial count,” Van Benthysen said.

Grant’s lawsuit asked Trump to pay him $300,000, though that could increase if the former president also has to pay the thousands of dollars in legal fees the artist has spent during four years of litigation.

Both Eddy Grant and Trump were subpoenaed to give dueling depositions in the case, and former Trump adviser Dan Scavino was also fired.

Grant sued Trump in 2020 over a campaign tweet — a crudely drawn 55-second animation of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden limping along a railroad track in a push cart as a high-speed “Trump-Pence” train zooms past.

About 40 seconds of “Electric Avenue” is played as part of the soundtrack.

Summarizing the history of the case in his ruling, U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl revealed that Scavino — Trump’s social media director and deputy chief of staff for communications at the time — uploaded the video to Trump’s personal Twitter account on Aug. 12 2020.

“Scavino testified that he saw the video on a Trump supporter’s social media page either the same day or the day before he posted the tweet,” the judge wrote Friday.

“Scavino also testified that he spoke with former President Trump prior to posting the tweet and that former President Trump ‘let him go with (his) instinct and post it,'” the judge wrote.

The video has been viewed more than 13.7 million times, liked more than 350,000 times and retweeted more than 139,000 times, the judge wrote.

Grant’s lawyers immediately sent Trump’s lawyers a cease-and-desist letter, but it wasn’t until Grant sued on September 1, 2020, that the video was removed.

Rejecting Trump’s claim that Grant never properly secured a copyright for the Electric Avenue sound recording, the judge said it was enough that Grant owned the copyright for a compilation that included the song.

Decisions in several previous legal cases support that finding, the judge said. Trump, meanwhile, could not cite a single supporting case, the judge said.

And in rejecting Trump’s claim that the animation was a “fair use” of the song, the judge methodically worked his way through the four-factor standard for copyright exemptions for fair use in his ruling.

The first factor relates to how the copyrighted work was used. In Trump’s case, Electric Avenue was used for commercial purposes, not for a permitted non-profit, research or educational purpose, the judge wrote.

The second factor looks at whether the copyrighted work was “creative” or “factual.” “It is clear that ‘Electric Avenue is a creative work and therefore falls closer to the core of copyright protection,'” the judge wrote.

The third factor weighs how much of the copyrighted work has been taken for unauthorized use. Here, the judge found that “the song plays for most of the animation; the fragment is of central importance’.

The final factor asks “whether, if the challenged use becomes widespread, it will adversely affect the potential market for the copyrighted work,” the judge wrote.

“In this case, there is no public benefit resulting from defendants’ use of ‘Avenue Electrice,'” the judge wrote.

“As Plaintiffs correctly argue, Defendants ‘could have used any song, created a new song, or used none at all, to convey the same political message in the infringing video.’

But the harm to Grant could be significant if the copyrights to his songs were not strictly enforced, the judge noted.

“The widespread and uncompensated use of Grant’s music in promotional videos — political or otherwise — would encourage would-be infringers and undermine Grant’s ability to obtain damages in exchange for licensing his music,” the judge wrote.

A lawyer for Trump did not immediately return a request for comment.