Taylor Swift’s celebratory week just got even better. Days after tying the knot with Travis Kelce in a star-studded New York City ceremony, the pop superstar has won a decisive legal victory. A federal judge has dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit that accused her of plagiarizing phrases from a Florida woman’s poetry for more than a dozen songs, including tracks from her 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department.
The lawsuit was filed by Kimberly Marasco, a self-published poet who represented herself in court. She claimed Swift copied details from her poetry books for songs like Down Bad and I Can Do It with a Broken Heart. But U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that Marasco failed to show her poems contained protected expression, that Swift had access to them, or that an ordinary observer would consider the works substantially similar.
Judge Cannon determined that any commonalities between Marasco’s poems and Swift’s songs amounted only to “unprotectable ideas, themes, metaphors, and isolated words,” citing examples like confronting adversity, being gaslighted, and submerged underwater . The judge noted that where Marasco made new allegations, “the works are not even substantially similar, a point plaintiff effectively concedes by characterizing the alleged copying as ‘paraphrase,’ ‘rephrase,’ and copying with ‘minor word substitutions'”.
This ruling comes after an earlier version of Marasco’s lawsuit was dismissed last September. Monday’s dismissal was with prejudice, meaning Marasco cannot file an amended version of the complaint. She has stated she disagrees with the decision and plans to appeal. The victory follows Swift’s July 3 wedding to the Kansas City Chiefs star at Madison Square Garden, where actor Adam Sandler officiated a ceremony attended by over 1,000 guests including Stevie Nicks and Paul McCartney.
