Taylor Swift is currently facing a new copyright lawsuit centered around her 2019 hit record, Lover. In a complaint filed last week, the Grammy winner, 32, was accused by author Teresa La Dart of copying a self-published book of poems that shares the same name of Swift’s seventh studio album.
As fans may recall, the special-edition CD of Swift’s Lover came with a book that the New York Times dubbed a “must-read companion” for Swifties. In La Dart’s complaint filed in Tennessee federal court, the poet claimed that “a number of creative elements” from her 2010 book Lover were copied into Swift’s book.
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La Dart’s lawyer wrote in the lawsuit that Swift’s book infringes La Dart’s copyrights, and the “Wildest Dreams” hitmaker now owes in “excess of one million dollars” in damages. La Dart’s attorney William S. Parks wrote, “The defendants to this day have neither sought, nor obtained, a license from TLD of her creative design element rights, nor have they given any credit to TLD … let alone provided any monetary payments.”
As for the alleged similarities between the books, La Dart believes that they share “pastel pinks and blues,” on the covers, and also each have a photograph of the author “photographed in a downward pose.” La Dart also claims that Swift copied her project’s “format,” specifically “a recollection of past years memorialized in a combination of written and pictorial components.” La Dart also says that Swift’s inner book design has “interspersed photographs and writings” which also apparently infringed her copyrights.
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Since news of the lawsuit broke, several legal experts have expressed their beliefs that La Dart may not be successful in this endeavor. “As far as I can tell, she isn’t claiming that any of the actual content is similar,” wrote Aaron Moss, litigator at Greenberg Glusker who often writes about copyright lawsuits at Copyright Lately. “The idea of memorializing a series of recollections over a number of years by interspersing ‘written and pictorial components’ isn’t protectable,” Moss explained. “If it were, this person might as well sue anyone who’s ever written a diary or made a scrap book.”
While the titles of both books in question are exactly the same, Moss says that copyright law usually won’t protect titles themselves. The name “Lover” is also clearly not original to La Dart, as Billboard reports that the U.S. Copyright Office records indicate that more than 12 other books have this same title. Moss notably added, “This lawsuit should be thrown out on a motion to dismiss, if the plaintiff’s lawyer doesn’t think better of it and voluntarily withdraw the complaint first.”
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La Dart’s attorney defended bringing the case in an email statement sent to Billboard, “My client feels strongly about her position and the full comparison of both books side-by-side would provide a clearer view. This filing was not taken lightly.”
This also isn’t the first copyright lawsuit Swift has faced in recent years. She is currently being defended in a long-running case that claims that they lyrics from “Shake It Off” were taken from another that also includes the words “playas” and “haters.” In early August, the “cardigan” singer filed her own sworn declaration in that case. She claimed that her chart-topping hit was “written entirely by me” and that she had never previously heard the lyrics that she is accused of copying.
