Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’ copyright case dropped

Two composers who said Taylor Swift stole their lyrics for her huge 2014 hit Shake It Off had e a case, a Los Angeles federal court judge has ruled.

Swift’s “usage as alleged is similar enough” to withstand the petition to dismiss, according to US District Judge Michael Fitzgerald, who also noted that composers Sean Hall and Nathan Butler “have sufficiently alleged a protectable selection and arrangement or a sequence of creative expression.”

In 2017, Hall and Butler filed a lawsuit alleging that Swift’s Shake It Off lyrics were lifted from the 2001 3LW song Playas Gon’ Play.

“Playas, they going to play, and haters, they going to hate,” are some of the lyrics of the 3LW song.

Swift has successfully fended off a copyright complaint that claimed she had stolen the title track from her 1989 album. According to Reuters, the two songwriters, Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, dropped the lawsuit and said that they would dismiss the case with prejudice, barring them from filing again.

The case’s trial was initially slated to begin on January 17. It was not specified in the court documents submitted on Monday whether the parties had reached a settlement.

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Swift’s mother, Andrea Swift, also filed a statement saying that she “carefully monitored both the television [Swift] watched and the music she heard”.

Hall and Butler had argued that the lyrics were too close for their similarity to be a coincidence. They had asked for an unspecified amount of damages.

With the case over, Taylor Swift may now resume re-recording her album.