{"id":7962,"date":"2025-09-30T02:26:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T02:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/judge-rules-lyrics-didnt-copy-poems\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T02:26:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T02:26:32","slug":"judge-rules-lyrics-didnt-copy-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/judge-rules-lyrics-didnt-copy-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Rules Lyrics Didn’t Copy Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit claiming Taylor Swift stole lyrics for 15 of her songs from a self-published Florida poet, ruling the accuser was trying to claim ownership over basic ideas and \u201ccommon words.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKimberly Marasco sued Swift\u2019s company last year over allegations that more than a dozen of the star\u2019s songs \u2014 spanning the albums Lover<\/em>, Folklore<\/em>, Evermore<\/em>, Midnights<\/em> and The Tortured Poets Department<\/em> \u2014 ripped off copyrighted material from two books of poetry.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tBut in a ruling Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon thoroughly rejected those claims. She ruled that Swift likely never saw the poems, that her lyrics were not similar to them, and, most crucially, that Marasco didn\u2019t even own any rights to the \u201ccommon\u201d phrases she claimed Swift had copied.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPlaintiff\u2019s poems amount at most to ideas, metaphors, contexts, and themes \u2014 none of which is a proper subject of copyright protection,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit cited the fact that Swift\u2019s lyrics included some of the same words as Marasco\u2019s poems, including \u201ctears,\u201d \u201cyelling,\u201d \u201crunning,\u201d \u201cfear,\u201d \u201ctime,\u201d \u201crain,\u201d \u201csky,\u201d \u201cwaves,\u201d \u201ccruel,\u201d \u201cmean,\u201d \u201cdesire,\u201d \u201clove,\u201d and \u201cinvisible.\u201d But in her ruling, Judge Cannon said that\u2019s not at all how copyright law works.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPlaintiff\u2019s attempt to protect various words is equally unavailing,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cThese common words alone are not copyrightable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ruling is not quite the end for Marasco\u2019s litigation. Though it permanently dismissed claims against the star\u2019s Taylor Swift Productions, Marasco also filed a separate case against Swift herself earlier this year. But that case now faces long odds: It is essentially over the same accusations, and it\u2019s currently pending before the same judge.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Taylor<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tMarasco filed her lawsuit last year, claiming the superstar had stolen material for lyrics to songs like \u201cThe Man,\u201d \u201cMy Tears Ricochet,\u201d \u201cIllicit Affairs\u201d and many others. In court filings, Swift\u2019s lawyers have called the case \u201cutterly baseless\u201d and based on \u201cshort phrases plucked from random spots.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn one alleged infringement, she claimed Swift\u2019s \u201cMy Tears Ricochet\u201d was copied from her poem \u201cBeams of Light.\u201d In Swift\u2019s song, the lyric reads: \u201cAnd I still talk to you\/when I\u2019m screaming at the sky\u201d; in Marasco\u2019s poem, the words are: \u201cThe dark evil entity Devoured in the Fire\/Doves dancing and singing high in the sky, and I can hear the beautiful choir.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps unsurprisingly, Judge Cannon ruled Monday that she didn\u2019t see much resemblance. She said Marasco had \u201cfallen woefully short\u201d of proving that Swift\u2019s words were \u201csubstantially similar\u201d to her own \u2014 the test courts use to decide copyright cases: \u201cNone of Plaintiff\u2019s thirteen claims plausibly alleges an objective substantial similarity between Defendant\u2019s songs and Plaintiff\u2019s poems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEven if the songs had been closely similar, the judge ruled that Marasco still would have had no right to sue over such \u201cnoncopyrightable material\u201d \u2014 common themes and ideas that nobody gets to own. She pointed to the lawsuit\u2019s claim that Swift had misappropriated Marasco\u2019s poem about \u201ca woman being gaslighted and attacked.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTo the extent that some similarities in the words and general themes exist between Defendant\u2019s songs and Plaintiff\u2019s poems, those commonalities are not \u2026 protectable expressions,\u201d Judge Cannon wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tBoth Marasco and a representative for Swift did not immediately return requests for comment on Monday (Sept. 29).<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit claiming Taylor Swift stole lyrics for 15 of her songs from a self-published Florida poet, ruling the accuser was trying to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6833,2949,423,2272,6834,351],"class_list":["post-7962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-copy","tag-didnt","tag-judge","tag-lyrics","tag-poems","tag-rules"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}