Taylor Swift Facing $1 Million Lawsuit Filed By Author Over 2019 Lover Book

Three years after releasing her Lover book along with an album of the same name, Taylor Swift is being accused of coping “design and textual elements” from an author’s 2010 book.

By Ashley Joy Parker Aug 24, 2022 10:05 PMTags
Watch: Taylor Swift Facing $1 Million Lawsuit for Lover Book

Taylor Swift has got bad blood with an author.

The "Don't Blame Me" singer is facing a new copyright lawsuit that alleges she ripped off the book that accompanied her 2019 album Lover from a self-published book of poems under the same name.

In a complaint filed in a Tennessee federal court on Aug. 23, author Teresa La Dart claimed that "design and textual elements" from her 2010 book Lover were copied into Swift's book. According to legal documents, obtained by E! News, La Dart's lawyers claim that Swift's book—which sold 2.9 million copies in the U.S. alone—infringes La Dart's copyrights and the Grammy winner now owes their client in "excess of one million dollars" in damages.

La Dart claims the books are "substantially the same format of a recollection of past years memorialized in a combination of written and pictorial components." The alleged similarities include covers that both feature "pastel pinks and blues," as well as an image of the author "photographed in a downward pose." 

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Fascinating Facts About Taylor Swift

In the complaint, La Dart adds that the inner book design, specifically the "interspersed photographs and writings," also infringed her copyrights.

E! News has reached out to Swift's reps but have not yet heard back.

Swift's latest legal headache comes five years after another copyright lawsuit in which Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, who wrote the 3LW song "Playas Gon' Play," accused her of plagiarizing their lyrics for her 2014 hit "Shake It Off."

The songwriters alleged that Swift stole the lyrics "Playas gon' play / And haters, they gon' hate" lines from the 2001 song to use in her Grammy-nominated track as, "'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play / And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate."

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

The "All too Well" singer responded to the lawsuit earlier this month and refuted the accusation. Per court documents obtained by E! News, Swift wrote in a declaration dated Aug. 6, "The lyrics to 'Shake It Off' were written entirely by me."

"Until learning about Plaintiffs' claim in 2017, I had never heard the song 'Playas Gon' Play and had never heard of that song or the group 3LW,'" she continued. "The first time I ever heard the song was after this claim was made."

 

 

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