PremiumTaylor Swift faces USD 1 million copyright lawsuit for Lover111
Apparently, Swift plagiarised the book that went with her album Lover from a self-published book of poems with the same name.
Last Updated: 08.20 PM, Oct 16, 2023
Taylor Swift is facing a $1 million copyright infringement lawsuit after a poet from Memphis, Tennessee, filed documents alleging the singer-songwriter plagiarised sections of her book for her 2019 album Lover.
Teresa La Dart's lawsuit claims Swift borrowed "creative components that replicated the expressive design arrangements" for her seventh studio album from a book La Dart released with the same Lover title on January 12, 2010.
Swift released the album and a companion book on August 23, 2019. For copyright infringement cases, the statute of limitations is three years after the work is released. La Dart has to file her complaint against the 11-time Grammy winner.
La Dart claims in her suit that Swift and the Taylor Swift Productions, Inc. (TSP) book contains "substantially the same format of a recollection of past years memorialised in a combination of written and pictorial components with a book."
There's, further, a "substantially similar cover format, with the author photographed in a downward pose, and a colour scheme (pastel pinks and blues) with the same title with substantially the same introduction page formats with a similarly styled Lover title, as well as an earlier photograph of the author in a natural setting and turned to the right," according to the suit.
The defendants "neither sought nor obtained a licence from TLD (Teresa La Dart) of her creative design element rights, nor have they given any credit to TLD concerning the TLD work and the infringing Swift and TSP 'Lover' book release," as per the documents.
The suit said the Swift album has reached “at least 2.9 million copies sold within the United States since its release date (over 4 million copies sold internationally).”
La Dart claims she has suffered “continuing” damages and “will not abate in the future.”
Lover was Swift’s seventh studio album and the first album she recorded with Republic Records after leaving Big Machine Records after a 12-year contract dispute with Scooter Braun over her master recordings.
The album was her sixth consecutive Billboard 200 chart-topper, and it included Me!, You Need to Calm Down, The Man, and Lover.