{"id":155857,"date":"2022-12-12T20:58:23","date_gmt":"2022-12-12T20:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/taylor-swift-shake-it-off-lyrics-lawsuit-dropped-after-5-years-billboard\/"},"modified":"2022-12-12T20:58:23","modified_gmt":"2022-12-12T20:58:23","slug":"taylor-swift-shake-it-off-lyrics-lawsuit-dropped-after-5-years-billboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/taylor-swift-shake-it-off-lyrics-lawsuit-dropped-after-5-years-billboard\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift ‘Shake It Off’ Lyrics Lawsuit Dropped After 5 Years \u2013 Billboard"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\tTaylor Swift has reached an agreement with two songwriters to end a five-year long copyright argument claiming she stole the lyrics to \u201cShake It Off\u201d from an earlier song about \u201cplayas\u201d and \u201chaters,\u201d resolving one of the music industry’s biggest legal battles without a climactic trial or ruling.<\/p>\n

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\tIn a joint filing made on Monday in California federal court, attorneys for both Swift and her accusers \u2013 songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler \u2013 asked a judge for an order \u201cdismissing this action in its entirety.\u201d Before the deal, a trial had been scheduled to kick off in January.<\/p>\n

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\tThe public filings did not include any specific terms of the apparent settlement, like whether any money exchanged or songwriting credits would be changed. Attorneys for both sides and a rep for Swift did not immediately return requests for comment.<\/p>\n

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\tThe agreement means a sudden end for a blockbuster case that seemed headed toward the next landmark ruling on music copyrights. Following legal battles over Robin Thicke’s \u201cBlurred Lines\u201d and Led Zeppelin’s \u201cStairway to Heaven,\u201d the case against Swift posed fundamental questions about the limits of copyright protection, with her lawyers arguing that the accusers were trying to \u201ccheat the public domain\u201d by monopolizing basic lyrical phrases.<\/p>\n

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\tHall and Butler first sued way back in 2017, claiming Swift stole her lyrics to \u201cShake It Off\u201d from their \u201cPlayas Gon’ Play,\u201d a song released by R&B group 3LW in 2001. That was no small accusation, given the song in question: \u201cShake It Off\u201d debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 2014 and ultimately spent 50 weeks on the chart, a mega-hit even for one of music’s biggest stars.<\/p>\n

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\tIn Hall and Butler’s song, the line was \u201cplayas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate\u201d; in Swift’s track, she sings, \u201c’Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.\u201d In their complaint, the duo said Swift’s lyric was clearly copied from their song.<\/p>\n

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\tIn the years since, Swift’s attorneys repeatedly pushed to dismiss the case, arguing that a short snippet of lyrics about \u201cplayers\u201d and \u201chaters\u201d was not creative or unique enough to be covered by copyrights. They cited more than a dozen earlier songs that had used similar phrases, including 1997’s \u201cPlaya Hater\u201d by Notorious BIG and 1999’s \u201cDon’t Hate the Player\u201d by Ice-T.<\/p>\n

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\tSwift initially won a decision in 2018 dismissing the case on those grounds, with a federal judge ruling that Hall and Butler’s lyrics were not protected because popular culture in 2001 had been \u201cheavily steeped in the concepts of players, haters, and player haters. \u201d But an appeals court later overruled that decision, and a judge ruled last year that the case would need to be decided by a jury trial.<\/p>\n

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\t\u201cEven though there are some noticeable differences between the works, there are also significant similarities in word usage and sequence\/structure,\u201d the judge wrote at the time.<\/p>\n

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\tMore recently, Swift’s team again asked the judge to dismiss the case, this time making a new argument: That documents turned over during the case had revealed that Hall and Butler voluntarily signed away their right to file the argument in the first place.<\/p>\n

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\tIn an August filing, Swift’s lawyers said the documents proved that Hall and Butler had granted their music publishers the exclusive rights to bring an infringement lawsuit over the song, meaning they lacked the legal standing to do so. Her lawyers said the pair had even emailed their publishers \u2013 Sony Music Publishing and Universal Music Publishing Group, respectively \u2013 asking for permission to sue, but that both companies had refused the request.<\/p>\n

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\t\u201cAfter their music publishers refused to assign to plaintiffs the claim they assert in this action, their manager unsuccessfully lobbied a United States Congressman to get a House sub-committee to intervene,\u201d Swift’s lawyers alleged in the filing.<\/p>\n

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\tThat motion was still pending when Monday’s settlement was filed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n