Photo Credit: Eva Rinaldi / CC by 3.0
Taylor Swift is officially facing a copyright infringement lawsuit for allegedly lifting elements of a 2010 poetry collection to create a book that released with the deluxe edition of Lover (2019).
An individual named Teresa La Dart submitted the complaint – one of several copyright infringement cases against Taylor Swift – to a Tennessee federal court yesterday, which marked the third anniversary of the Lover album’s debut. Spanning only five pages, the concise action explains off the bat that the plaintiff copyrighted and published a book entitled Lover in early 2010.
Though the suit is light on concrete details about the project from La Dart, it’s described on Amazon (where irked Swifties have already started posting one-star reviews) as a poetry collection. (The words “poem” and “poetry” appear a grand total of zero times in the action despite the latter’s being featured at the top of the allegedly infringed book’s cover.)
Additionally, the 56-page-long book’s description on the ecommerce website reads in part: “But, seriously, thank you for picking up this book. Poetry may be considered a lost art, but it is still about personal feelings, and I believe that is what makes us human. As you immerse yourself into these words and for a moment live through my poetry, hopefully, you will realize that self love equates to true love, and that is what God is all about.”
According to the stunning infringement complaint, Taylor Swift immersed herself “into these words” so much that her own Lover book (consisting of journal entries) ultimately “included a number of creative elements that copied the expressive designs and arrangements” from the older of the titles.
And after underscoring that La Dart’s Lover had been made “available through various channels by publisher AuthorHouse, thus allowing for repeated and long-term access to Swift,” the straightforward lawsuit rattles off some of the perceived similarities between the works.
Specifically, the Lover books are said to include:
- “Substantially the same format of a recollection of past years memorialized in a combination of written and pictorial components”
- An alike “cover format, with the author photographed in a downward pose, and color scheme (pastel pinks and blues) with the same title”
- Purportedly overlapping “introduction page formats with a similarly styled ‘Lover’ title, as well as an earlier photograph of the author in a nature setting and turned to the right and an accompanying forward [sic] with substantially similar greetings and wishes for the reader”
- “Substantially similar” inner book designs and back covers
Predictably, given the newly filed lawsuit, La Dart claims that she’s not received “any credit” or “any monetary payments” for the elements of her book that Swift allegedly borrowed. Consequently, the plaintiff is seeking damages in excess of $1 million, and at the time of this writing, the defendant artist didn’t look to have responded to the complaint on social media.