Taylor Swift has been in the IP spotlight again and, as always,
there are valuable lessons to be learned.
The singer was recently sued in a US court for copyright
infringement. The case was brought by two songwriters, Sean Hall
and Nathan Butler, who claimed that certain lyrics that feature in
Taylor Swift's song Shake it Off – "Cause
the players gonna play, play, play / And the haters gonna hate,
hate, hate, hate, hate" – infringe their copyright in
the lyrics of a song they wrote called Playas Gon'
Play (performed by a group called JLW) – "Playas,
they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate."
The judge rejected the claim. His reasoning will be enlightening
for those who are a tad out of touch with modern culture: "By
2001 American popular culture was heavily steeped in the concepts
of players, haters and player-haters ... the concept of actors
acting in accordance with their essential nature is not at all
creative, it is banal. The alleged infringed lyrics are
