Taylor Swift has spent her whole life putting her feelings into words.
And despite poet Kimberly Marasco’s lawsuit alleging some of Swift’s lyrics were a copyright infringement of her poems, a federal judge has dismissed Marasco’s case—allowing Swift to shake off the claims once and for all.
In the ruling, obtained by E! News July 6, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon asserts that “the allegedly infringed material—basic ideas, themes, metaphors, isolated words, and short phrases—is not protected expression and cannot be infringed.”
Additionally, in order to prove copyright infringement, a plaintiff needs to provide direct evidence of copying by showing that “(a) that Defendants had access to her works and (b) that the works are ‘so substantially similar . . . that an average lay observer would recognize the alleged copy as having been appropriated from the original work.’”
In this case, however, the Court ruled that Marasco “has failed to plausibly allege either access or substantial similarity, each of which is independently required to plead copying.”
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