Taylor Swift Hit with Fresh Suit Over 'Shake It Off' - Law360

Home , Gaye family, Look What You Made Me Do, Shake It, Shake It Off

9/20/2017 Taylor Swift Hit With Fresh Suit Over 'Shake It Off' - Law360

By Kat Greene Law360, Los Angeles (September 19, 2017, 7:44 PM EDT) -- A pair of songwriters accused Taylor Swift, Sony ATV and Universal Music Group of ripping off lyrics from a 2001 hit song they’d penned, saying Monday that even though “Shake It Off’s” use of the lyrics wasn’t exactly the same, they still violated the songwriters’ copyright.

Songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler said the lyrics in the chorus of the pop star’s song, “Players gonna play play play play play, and the haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate,” stepped on a phrase they had popularized for 3LW in the early 2000s, when the girl group hit the charts with their song “Playas Gon’ Play,” according to the suit.

Though Swift’s song doesn’t use the exact same lyrics as 3LW’s, Hall and Butler say it’s common practice for artists to share the royalties with the writers who first crafted a catchy phrase, according to the suit.

“Plaintiffs were the first to put such a sequence together using the terms playas and haters, and prior to defendants’ use at issue herein, the combination had not since been used in popular music,” Hall and Butler said in the suit. “Thus, this sequence created by plaintiffs is unique and copyrightable.”

The suit raises issues that have captivated the copyright community since Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams lost a jury trial in March 2015 and were hit with a $7.4 million verdict over their song “Blurred Lines,” which Marvin Gaye’s family had said closely resembled the style of the late Motown singer’s “Got to Give It Up.”

Later that year, another Los Angeles jury took a different tack, determining that, although it was possible members of Led Zeppelin had heard a song that may have influenced the intro to “Stairway To Heaven,” the two songs weren’t similar enough to count as copyright infringement.

Hall and Butler said in their suit on Monday that it’s become common practice for artists to share credit with work that inspired their own, even if the result isn’t a direct copy. The songwriters cited two songs by Beyonce off her 2016 album “Lemonade,” saying that, though she hadn’t exactly copied the lyrics of two other artists’ music, she cleared the use of the lyrics in advance with the copyright owners, according to the suit.

“This demonstrates the industry standard practice to clear such lyrical similarities,” the songwriters said.

Hall and Butler aren’t even the first musicians to sue Swift over “Shake It Off,” court records show. In a 2015 suit, a songwriter named Jessie Braham — whose YouTube account is listed under the name Jesse Graham — accused the popular artist of stealing the same lyrics to which Hall and Butler now lay claim, according to that suit.

Braham represented himself in that case and was shut down when U.S. Magistrate Judge Gail Standish ruled in November 2015 that the pleadings were woefully deficient and quoted Swift’s lyrics while doing so.

The judge, in that order, had created a list of other sources that used the phrase “haters gonna hate” publicly. Among the entries on the list was the 3LW song at the center of Monday’s suit. https://www.law360.com/articles/965354/print?section=california 1/2 9/20/2017 Taylor Swift Hit With Fresh Suit Over 'Shake It Off' - Law360

Lauren Greene of Gerard Fox Law PC, who represents Hall and Butler, told Law360 on Tuesday that Swift cleared the use of two other artists' work on her newest single, "Look What You Made Me Do," so it's clear she's familiar with the industry custom of giving credit. The lyrics lifted from "Playas Gon' Play" are substantially similar in a such a way that it's infringement, she said.

"Our clients are proud of the work that they’ve created and they believe that the portion of their song that was taken was an important element of the song, so they’re just trying to protect their copyright," Greene said.

A spokesman for Sony declined to comment on Tuesday. A representative for Universal didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The other parties couldn’t be immediately located for comment.

The songwriters are represented by Gerard P. Fox, Lauren M. Greene and Banu S. Naraghi of Gerard Fox Law PC.

Counsel information for the defendants couldn’t be immediately determined.

The suit is Sean Hall dba Gimme Some Hot Sauce Music et al. v. Taylor Swift et al., case number 2:17-cv-06882, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

--Additional reporting by Bill Donahue and Daniel Siegal. Editing by Breda Lund.

https://www.law360.com/articles/965354/print?section=california 2/2