Taylor Swift Attempts to Shake Off Copyright Lawsuit

Taylor Swift Attempts to Shake Off Copyright Lawsuit

Taylor Swift’s hit song “Shake It Off” has presented her with a plethora of legal issues spanning half a decade. Back in 2017, songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler accused Swift of stealing lyrics from the 2001 song “Playas Gon’ Play” that they wrote for their girl group 3LW.^[1] They filed a copyright infringement suit against Swift, Big Machine Records, Sony Music Publishing, and others involved in the making of the song.^[2]

The lyrics from Hall and Butler’s song went “playas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate,” while Swift’s song contains the lyrics “cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.”^[3] The complaint states that “through Plaintiff’s own originality they created the original and unique lyrical phrase… which is featured prominently in the chorus of Plaintiff’ work.”^[4] It goes on to say that the defendants “knew or should have known that ‘Playas Gon’ Play’ could not be used in a musical work by Defendants without a license and/or songwriting credit, as is customary standard practice in the music industry.”^[5]

Hall and Butler’s suit was dismissed in 2018, but was revived by the Ninth Circuit a year later when federal judges found that it was dropped prematurely.^[6] The Ninth Circuit reasoned that while the district court had dismissed the suit based on a lack of originality in “the pertinent portions of Hall’s work,” Hall’s complaint just needed to show the work contained a plausible modicum of originality – thus the court reversed the dismissal as Hall’s work met the low originality standard.^[7] On August 8, Swift filed a declaration stating that the lyrics to her song drew from commonly used phrases and comments, and that prior to writing her song, she had heard “players gonna play” and “haters gonna hate” countless times throughout her life in referring to shrugging off negativity.^[8] She insists that she improvised the lyrics during the song-making process and that the phrases are ubiquitous across culture.^[9]

Swift’s team asked U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald to reconsider his December 9 ruling that the conflict presented a genuine dispute that should be heard by a jury.^[10] They contended that the court failed to consider the “extrinsic test” that focuses only on protectable elements while filtering out and tossing phrases in the public domain.^[11] Judge Fitzgerald denied the motion for reconsideration and made it clear that he intends to stick to the mid-January 2023 trial date.^[12] He based the decision in part on expert witnesses for the plaintiffs who found substantial similarity between the lyrics and sequential structure of the two songs.^[13] An attorney for Hall and Butler said that she is pleased with the court’s decision, especially because the “defendants’ resources vastly outweigh those of our clients here, and it is about time that justice should serve the merits rather than deep pockets.”^[14]

Meanwhile, 3LW’s Kiely Williams made it clear on Instagram Live that she is not a part of the lawsuit, and called on Swift to tell her fans that the members of 3LW have nothing to do with the song.^[15] In Swift’s declaration, she affirmed that she had never heard of the girl group prior to the lawsuit.^[16] Only time will tell whether Swift and her legal team will be able to prove that the phrases from her song are ubiquitous across culture.