Beyoncé‘s Parkwood Entertainment wants the former label boss suing it over the sample that opens Alien Superstar, and his lawyer, to pay its legal bills.
In motions filed with a federal court in Los Angeles on October 15, Parkwood asked a judge to throw out the case permanently and to penalize Shuji Hirose and his attorney, DaShawn Hayes, for bringing it.
It is the second lawsuit Hirose has brought over the sample, after the first was dismissed in June.
Parkwood maintains that the new case rests on claims that directly contradict what Hirose said under oath in that earlier case.
Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Music Publishing, and Warner Chappell‘s W Chappell Music Corp., which are also defendants, backed Parkwood‘s request to have the case dismissed in a filing the same day.
Parkwood‘s motion for sanctions can be read in full here, and its bid to dismiss the case here.
The dispute centers on Moonraker, a 1998 house record by John Holiday, who performs as Foremost Poets.
Its spoken-word introduction is heard at the top of Alien Superstar, a No. 19 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 from Beyoncé‘s 2022 album Renaissance.
Parkwood licensed the sample directly from Holiday in September 2022, paying him USD $10,000 plus 0.5% of the track’s royalties, as MBW reported in June.
Hirose, who ran the now-defunct New York label Soundmen on Wax, claims that Holiday signed all of his rights in both the recording and the underlying composition over to that label in 1998, keeping only an equal share of the publishing revenue, and so had nothing to license.
But in the first case, Hirose stated in a sworn declaration that Holiday had transferred only “50/50 publishing” rights to Soundmen on Wax, with “third-party licensing rights shared equally,” according to Parkwood.
In March, when it dismissed an earlier version of the complaint, the court relied on that position in finding that “Holiday had the right to license the copyright material to Parkwood,” the filings note.
“In light of Mr. Hirose and Mr. Hayes’s admissions that Mr. Holiday retains co-ownership and licensing rights in Moonraker, Plaintiffs’ claims – premised on directly contrary allegations – are objectively baseless,” Parkwood‘s sanctions motion argues.
Parkwood‘s separate filing seeking dismissal states: “Simply put, Parkwood cannot be liable for allegedly infringing a work it had a valid license to use.”
The first lawsuit was filed on July 29, 2025, by a Florida company called Hirose Enterprises, LLC.
US District Judge Mark C. Scarsi, ruling on behalf of the judge assigned to the case, dismissed it on June 26, 2026, after finding that the company had not been formed until eight days after it sued.
Hirose refiled on August 10, this time suing in his own name alongside a Delaware company, Hirose Enterprise LLC, and naming Beyoncé personally as a defendant.
“The only difference between Hirose Enterprises, LLC and Hirose Enterprise LLC (the plaintiff in the current action) is the letter ‘S’ and a comma,” Parkwood notes.
Parkwood says that Hirose “returns to this Court for the fourth time,” counting the three versions of the complaint filed in the first case.
The new complaint relies on three documents signed by Hirose and his companies on July 18, 2026, three weeks after the first case was dismissed.
According to the complaint, two of those documents put in writing transfers of the Moonraker rights that took place years earlier, from Soundmen on Wax to Hirose and from Hirose to the Delaware company. The third is a quitclaim through which the Florida company hands over to the Delaware company any interest it might have held.
Parkwood counts six agreements in all that the complaint cites or attaches: the three signed in July, two “Heads of Agreement” from 2016 and 2017, and the August 2025 assignment to the Florida company, which Hirose says was a mistake. It adds: “All six agreements were executed by Mr. Hirose, who now alleges that they either are or are not effective depending on what suits him.”
In their filing, the Sony companies and W Chappell point out that the Delaware company’s certificate of formation had been canceled and was not revived until April 2, 2026.
Yet the same company was named as the claimant on a US Copyright Office registration for Moonraker in March 2025.
The joint filing calls this “factually and chronologically impossible.” It says the application cited a “written transfer” to the company, though the complaint identifies no such document before July 2026, and argues that this appears to amount to “a false statement to the Copyright Office to obtain the registration.”
Hirose‘s complaint says that once revived, the Delaware company stands as though its cancellation never happened.
Parkwood also contends that the claims were brought too late.
Copyright claims must generally be filed within three years, and, citing Ninth Circuit precedent, Parkwood says that where a dispute is really about who owns a work, the claim accrues only once – when the claimed owner’s rights are repudiated – so later sales and streams don’t restart the clock.
In its view, the repudiation came in January 2023, when it kept using the sample after Hirose‘s lawyer put it on notice that the use was unauthorized.
The new lawsuit was filed roughly three and a half years later.
In its sanctions motion, Parkwood says it “has now spent well over a year defending itself against meritless copyright infringement claims brought by Shuji Hirose, the various entities that he controls, and his attorney, DaShawn Hayes.”
“This Court’s prior order put Mr. Hirose and Mr. Hayes unequivocally on notice that these claims are untenable,” Parkwood writes.
“Nonetheless, they continue to pursue them,” Parkwood adds. “There is no justifiable excuse for doing so.”
According to Parkwood, Hayes “admitted that he had not seen nor reviewed any of the agreements that allegedly made up the chain of title” in the earlier suit.
Parkwood wants the court to strike the complaint, dismiss the claims with prejudice, and order Hayes and Hirose to reimburse the legal fees and costs it has incurred in defending the case. It also asks for “monetary sanctions sufficient to deter Mr. Hayes and Mr. Hirose from initiating similarly frivolous actions against Parkwood.”
The filings do not put a figure on Parkwood‘s legal costs.
Parkwood‘s lawyers sent Hayes the motion on September 23, asking that the case be voluntarily dismissed with prejudice, and say he has not responded to requests to discuss it.
Under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, on which Parkwood is relying, a party seeking sanctions must serve the motion on its opponent and allow 21 days for the challenged filing to be withdrawn before asking the court to act.
Hirose‘s August complaint seeks unspecified damages, the defendants’ profits from the alleged infringement, and a court order barring further use of the Moonraker recording.
Such an order would stop Parkwood and its partners from exploiting Alien Superstar with the sample in place.
The complaint also brings a breach of contract claim against Holiday alone.
“Holiday purported to license rights he did not own; Parkwood and the other Defendants exploited, and continue to exploit, the resulting infringing work worldwide, including after receiving written notice in or about January 2023 that the use was unauthorized,” Hirose‘s complaint states.
It adds that “[n]o court has adjudicated the merits of any claim asserted herein,” noting that the first case was dismissed in June because the Florida company had not been formed when it sued.
Beyoncé is not among the defendants behind last week’s filings.
Both of Parkwood‘s motions are set to be heard on February 4, 2027, by US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, who was assigned the first case and issued the March ruling in it.Music Business Worldwide
