A US copyright lawsuit claiming Taylor Swift stole lyrics to her hit song Shake It Off has been dismissed by a judge.
Two songwriters have dropped their lawsuit claiming that Taylor Swift copied their lyrics in her 2014 No 1 hit Shake It Off, according to court documents filed on Monday.
Both parties — Swift and songwriters Nathan Butler and Sean Hall — have asked a judge to dimiss their 2017 case with prejudice, which means it cannot be refiled.A trial in the case had been scheduled to begin Jan. 17.
Monday’s court papers, filed jointly by attorneys for both Swift and the songwriters, did not say if there was a settlement. Representatives for the parties did not immediately respond to requests for more information.
Taylor Swift Copyright Case
The two songwriters Sean Hall and Nate Butler, alleged that the award-winning singer lifted the lyrics from their own Playas Gon' Play track, which was performed by US girl group 3LW. However, Swift wrote in a filing “Until learning about Plaintiffs’ claim in 2017, I had never heard the song ‘Playas Gon’ Play’ and had never heard of that song or the group 3LW.” She said she would have had little opportunity to hear it during its brief chart run, since her parents “did not permit me to watch (MTV’s hit countdown show) TRL until I was about 13 years old.”
The decision comes around a month before the case, which was first filed back in 2017, was due to go on trial on 17 January.A judge dismissed the case in 2018, but a U.S. appeals court revived it in 2019.
The court papers did not detail if a settlement had been reached between Swift, and Hall and Butler.
Hall and Butler said that the lyrics were too close for their similarity to be a coincidence. They had asked for an unspecified amount of money damages.
