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Taylor Swift Files Motion to Dismiss 'Shake It Off' Lawsuit After an 'Unprecedented' Ruling

Taylor Swift Files Motion to Dismiss 'Shake It Off' Lawsuit After an 'Unprecedented' Ruling

Taylor Swift is making a request.

According to Billboard, the folklore performer has filed a motion to have a federal judge dismiss the jury trial regarding allegations that she stole the lyrics from “Shake It Off” from another song about “playas” and “haters.”

The outlet writes that Taylor‘s lawyers have argued the judge’s latest ruling over her was “unprecedented.”

Click inside to read more…

The court rejected Taylor‘s request to dismiss the lawsuit two weeks ago, alleging that her lyrics came from 3LW‘s 2001 song “Playas Gon’ Play.”

However, the “All Too Well” singer’s attorneys asked the judge to reconsider his verdict, which is typically only done when a judge has made an evident mistake.

Taylor‘s lawyers said that “no other court” had ever allowed a similar case to move on to trial, explaining: “Plaintiffs could sue everyone who writes, sings, or publicly says ‘players gonna play’ and ‘haters gonna hate.’ To permit that is unprecedented and cheats the public domain.”

The lawsuit was initially filed by songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler back in 2017.

U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald denied Taylor‘s appeal on Dec. 9 and declared that the case would need to be determined by a jury of her peers.

Taylor‘s attorneys argued that the judge made a “clear error” in his analysis, claiming that he had failed to apply copyright law’s extrinsic test. The process involves judges filtering out material that isn’t covered by copyrights before they compare the songs.

“It is essential to distinguish between the protected and unprotected material in a plaintiff’s work… Doing so here leaves only this similarity: both works use versions of two short public domain phrases – ‘players gonna play’ and ‘haters gonna hate’ – that are free for everyone to use, and two other but different tautologies that plaintiffs claim share the same underlying general idea or concept,” Taylor’s legal team wrote. “The presence of versions of the two short public domain statements and two other tautologies in both songs … simply does not satisfy the extrinsic test.”

It was recently revealed that Taylor regretted one of her hit songs. Find out which

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