A federal judge has ruled that Taylor Swift must face a jury trial over accusations she stole the lyrics to “Shake It Off” from another song that also references “playas” and “haters.”
Though there are “some noticeable differences” between the two songs, the judge said there “enough objective similarities” that the case would need to be decided by a jury trial. The judge said Swift’s experts made “persuasive arguments” but that it wasn’t enough for her to escape the case.
“Shake It Off” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 2014 and spent four weeks atop the chart. The song ultimately spent 50 weeks on the Hot 100, tied with Swift’s “You Belong With Me” for her longest-charting single. But a year later, a federal appeals court reversed that ruling. The court said Fitzgerald had tossed the case too early and that “Playas Gon’ Play” was sufficiently creative for copyright protection. The ruling sent the case back to Judge Fitzgerald for new proceedings.
“Even though there are some noticeable differences between the works, there are also significant similarities in word usage and sequence/structure,” the judge wrote. “Although Defendants’ experts strongly refute the implication that there are substantial similarities, the Court is not inclined to overly credit their opinions here.”
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