A "Shake It Off" copyright lawsuit against music superstar Taylor Swift is proving not so easy to shake off.
A three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Monday reinstated a lawsuit filed by two songwriters alleging Swift, a celebrated songwriter, took lyrics from Sean Hall's 2001 song "Playas Gon’ Play" for her 2014 hit. A U.S. District Court judge dismissed that case last year.
The original lawsuit, filed by Hall, doing business as Gimme Some Hot Sauce Music, and Nathan Butler, doing business as Faith Force Music, claimed Swift's "Shake It Off" lyrics, "'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play/And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate," infringed on the earlier song. "Playas Gon' Play" includes the lines, "The playas gon' play/Them haters gonna hate" and "Playas, they gonna play/And haters, they gonna hate."
The district court judge cited a lack of originality in the pertinent lyrics from the 2001 song in dismissing the case, saying that “for such short phrases to be protected under the Copyright Act, they must be more creative than the lyrics at issues here.”
The appellate judges reversed that decision, citing a ruling by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes regarding judgments about artistic worth.
"It would be a dangerous undertaking for persons trained only to the law to constitute themselves final judges of the worth of pictorial illustrations, outside of the narrowest and most obvious limits," Holmes wrote in a 1903 decision. "At the one extreme, some works of genius would be sure to miss appreciation. … At the other end, copyright would be denied to pictures which appealed to a public less educated than the judge."
The reversal sends the case back to U.S. District Court for consideration.
Swift is no stranger to copyright claims related to "Shake It Off." In 2014, another U.S. District Court judge rejected a different "Shake It Off" lawsuit in which the writer of 2013's "Haters Gonna Hate" claimed Swift stole his lyrics and sought $42 million in damages.
USA TODAY has asked Swift's representative for comment.
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October 29, 2019 at 03:30PM
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Taylor Swift can't shake 'Shake It Off' copyright suit reinstated by federal court panel - msnNOW
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