{"id":246688,"date":"2025-12-09T11:50:29","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T11:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=246688"},"modified":"2025-12-09T11:56:03","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T11:56:03","slug":"taylor-swift-seeks-to-have-poets-frivolous-and-absurd-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-dismissed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/taylor-swift-seeks-to-have-poets-frivolous-and-absurd-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-dismissed\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift seeks dismissal of poet’s ‘frivolous’ and ‘absurd’ copyright infringement lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lawyers for Taylor Swift and Universal Music Group have asked a US federal court in Florida to dismiss a copyright lawsuit brought against them by a poet who claims that multiple songs by Swift ripped off her works.<\/p>\n

Calling it a \u201cfrivolous and harassing lawsuit,\u201d Swift\u2019s lawyers urged Judge Aileen Cannon<\/strong> to dismiss a case filed by Florida poet Kimberly Marasco<\/strong>, who earlier this year filed her second attempt at a copyright suit against Swift.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite having no conceivable case against [Swift], and after being expressly informed by this court that her allegedly infringed \u2018expressions\u2019 are not protectable under copyright law, plaintiff filed yet another meritless lawsuit and expanded her groundless campaign to include defendants [Universal Music Group] and Republic [Records],\u201d stated the motion, which was filed on December 4, and can be read in full here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlaintiff\u2019s claims are, as in her last lawsuit, absurd and legally baseless.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Marasco first filed a lawsuit against Taylor Swift in May 2024. She alleges that numerous songs on four Taylor Swift albums, including The Tortured Poets Department<\/em>, Lover<\/em>, Folklore<\/em> and Midnights<\/em>, copied poems that Marasco published in two volumes, Dealing With A Chronic Illness<\/em>, published in 2017, and Fallen From Grace<\/em>, published in 2019 and later renamed Songs of the Unsung<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Marasco\u2019s complaint identifies numerous songs that she claims copied from her works, including The Man<\/em>, Who\u2019s Afraid of Little Old Me?<\/em>, My Tears Ricochet<\/em>, Hoax<\/em>, I Can Do It With a Broken Heart<\/em>, and others.<\/p>\n

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Marasco is representing herself in court, and her first lawsuit failed when she was unable to serve process papers to Swift. According to a report<\/a> in USA Herald<\/em>, Marasco said her process servers were unable to get past Swift\u2019s security at numerous addresses. Lawyers for Swift argued she had gone about the task incorrectly, for instance by attempting to serve papers to an address under renovation, or while Swift was known to have been traveling.<\/p>\n

In her second lawsuit, filed with the court in February, Marasco asked for damages of no less than $25 million<\/strong>. However, in an amended complaint (available here<\/a>) filed in October, Marasco didn\u2019t specify a number.<\/p>\n

The second lawsuit also expanded the defendants in the case to include Republic Records<\/strong> and parent company Universal Music Group<\/strong>, as well as Jack Antonoff<\/strong> and Aaron Dessner<\/strong>, both known for having co-written songs with Swift. However, Judge Cannon dismissed Dessner from the case last month, due to what the judge concluded was Marasco\u2019s improper service of notice to the musician.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlaintiff\u2019s claims are, as in her last lawsuit, absurd and legally baseless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawyers for Taylor Swift<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While Marasco has argued that the similarities between her poems and the Swift songs \u201care so specific, unique and improbable that independent creation is unlikely,\u201d lawyers for Swift argue there are no recognizable similarities, except for individual words or themes, which can\u2019t be copyrighted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe concept of betrayal or the words \u2018fire\u2019 or \u2018love\u2019 cannot be owned by one person, as basic themes or words are not protectable by copyright law,\u201d Swift\u2019s lawyers wrote in the motion to dismiss.<\/p>\n

Marasco has also filed a request for a preliminary injunction to stop streaming service Disney+<\/strong> from airing The End of an Era<\/em>, a documentary series about Swift\u2019s The Eras Tour set to premiere on December 12.<\/p>\n

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The docuseries \u201cwill broadcast performances of the infringing works to millions of viewers worldwide, causing irreparable harm to plaintiff\u2019s exclusive rights to her works,\u201d Marasco’s motion stated. As of Monday (December 8), the court had not yet ruled on the injunction.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time Taylor Swift has faced legal action over her works \u2013 and it\u2019s not even the first time she was sued by a poet. In 2022, Teresa La Dart<\/strong> of Mississippi alleged that the companion book for Swift\u2019s album Lover<\/em> copied creative elements from La Dart\u2019s 2010 self-published poetry collection, also called Lover<\/em>.<\/p>\n

La Dart dropped the case in 2023. Legal experts told<\/a> Billboard<\/em> that La Dart\u2019s case was weak and she was facing potentially costly legal bills if she lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a motion to dismiss, lawyers for Swift called Kimberly Marasco’s lawsuit ‘frivolous and harassing’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":197017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[130670,134853,483],"class_list":["post-246688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-copyright-lawsuit","tag-kimberly-marasco","tag-taylor-swift"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246688"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246784,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246688\/revisions\/246784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}