{"id":1874,"date":"2021-12-28T08:54:46","date_gmt":"2021-12-28T13:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gynesisradio.com\/tpsquare\/2021\/12\/28\/taylor-swift-files-motion-to-have-shake-it-off-lawsuit-dismissed\/"},"modified":"2021-12-28T08:54:46","modified_gmt":"2021-12-28T13:54:46","slug":"taylor-swift-files-motion-to-have-shake-it-off-lawsuit-dismissed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gynesisradio.com\/tpsquare\/2021\/12\/28\/taylor-swift-files-motion-to-have-shake-it-off-lawsuit-dismissed\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift files motion to have \u2018Shake It Off\u2019 lawsuit dismissed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lawyers for Swift say the judge that allowed the suit to proceed failed to consider the \u201cextrinsic test\u201d<\/p>

\"Taylor
Taylor Swift. Credit: Kevin Mazur\/Getty Images for The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame<\/figcaption><\/figure>

It was reported earlier this month that Taylor Swift<\/a> would face a jury trial over accusations that she plagiarised the lyrics for \u2018Shake It Off\u2019<\/a>. Now, lawyers for the singer have formally asked to have that trial scrapped.<\/p>

Back in 2017, songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler claimed that Swift copied lines from the pair\u2019s 2001 song \u2018Playas Gon\u2019 Play\u2019<\/a>, which they wrote for the girl group\u00a03LW<\/a>. The case concerns the chorus of Swift\u2019s 2014 single, in which she sings, \u201c\u2018Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play\u201d\u00a0<\/em>and,\u00a0\u201cHaters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate\u201d<\/em>. In contrast, \u2018Playas Gon\u2019 Play\u2019 goes: \u201cPlayas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>

The lawsuit was dismissed in February 2018<\/a>, with a judge saying that the lyrics were too \u201cbanal\u201d to be copyrighted. However,\u00a0the decision was subsequently overturned by an appeals court in October 2019<\/a>. Then, in September 2020,\u00a0a Los Angeles judge confirmed that the case would go ahead<\/a>.<\/p>

LA judge Michael Fitzgerald said that Hall and Butler had \u201csufficiently alleged a protectable selection and arrangement or a sequence of creative expression\u201d and that the relevant parts of \u2018Shake It Off\u2019 that the pair identified were \u201csimilar enough\u201d to \u2018Playas Gon\u2019 Play\u2019 for a court case to proceed. Swift then requested a summary judgment \u2013 an immediate ruling that she had not infringed copyright \u2013 but on December 9, Fitzgerald refused.<\/p>

In a new defense motion filed last Thursday (December 23), lawyers for Swift say that Fitzgerald failed to consider the \u201cextrinsic test\u201d \u2013 the standard whereby it\u2019s determined if copyright is breached when two works of similar nature are presented \u2013 which would, in their belief, make it clear that Swift\u2019s lyrics are based on phrases in the public domain.<\/p>

As per court documents sighted by\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/em><\/a>, \u201cBoth works use versions of two short public domain phrases \u2013 \u2018players gonna play\u2019 and \u2018haters gonna hate\u2019 \u2013 that are free for everyone to use.<\/p>

\u201cThe presence of versions of the two short public domain statements and two other tautologies in both songs \u2013 a commonality that the court has noted \u2013 simply does not satisfy the extrinsic test. Otherwise, plaintiffs could sue everyone who writes, sings, or publicly says \u2018players gonna play\u2019 and \u2018haters gonna hate\u2019 alone with other tautologies. To permit that is unprecedented and cheats the public domain.<\/p>

A formal hearing on Swift\u2019s request to scrap the suit will take place on February 7 in Los Angeles.<\/p>

In a statement shared with Rolling Stone<\/em>, Gerard Fox \u2013 a lawyer representing Hall and Butler \u2013 said he and his clients \u201cfeel there is no basis for reconsideration, and that this is just a music mogul and her machine trying to deny our client justice by outspending a fellow lower-income artist\u201d.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawyers for Swift say the judge that allowed the suit to proceed failed to consider the \u201cextrinsic test\u201d It was reported earlier this month that Taylor Swift would face a jury trial over accusations that she plagiarised the lyrics for \u2018Shake It Off\u2019. Now, lawyers for the singer have formally asked to have that trial scrapped. Back in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1875,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gynesisradio.com\/tpsquare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gynesisradio.com\/tpsquare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gynesisradio.com\/tpsquare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gynesisradio.com\/tpsquare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gynesisradio.com\/tpsquare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gynesisradio.com\/tpsquare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gynesisradio.com\/tpsquare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gynesisradio.com\/tpsquare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gynesisradio.com\/tpsquare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gynesisradio.com\/tpsquare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}