WHAT? Now Beyoncé is being sued for COPYING parts of Lemonade
Just this morning it was reported that Ed Sheeran is being sued $20 million for copying a Matt Cardle song, and now it seems Beyoncé has found herself in a similarly tricky legal situation.
According to RTÉ, a Kentucky filmmaker has filed a lawsuit against the Hold Up singer alleging that parts of her Lemonade trailer were copied from a short film called Palinoia which he created in 2014.
Matthew Fulks claims he sent his video to Queen B’s team last summer – five months before they began filming Lemonade.
According to the lawsuit: “Both the PALINOIA Work and the LEMONADE Trailer are comprised of short visual and audio segments arranged in montage fashion, with certain segments recurring throughout the works.”
Fulks – who is currently working as a creative director at a news station – says the similarities between his work and Beyoncé’s video include “images of the central character in a state of distress,” “hand-painted graffiti words in similar styles,” “red persons with eyes obscured,” “garages with repeating ceiling light fixtures and columns with the lower halves of the columns painted yellow,” “overgrown grass,” and “stairwells”.
He says this visual crossover makes up almost two thirds of Beyoncé’s minute-long trailer and that the audio used in both videos is also similar.
Fulks is now seeking damages and a percentage of the profits from Lemonade which has so far been viewed over 10 million time.
