Taylor Swift believes that two opposing experts called to testify in her impending “Shake It Off” copyright infringement trial is “unqualified” and should be denied by the “gatekeeper” judge. In a new motion obtained by Rolling Stone, the superstar claims that one of the challenged witnesses has failed to provide a legitimate basis for his claim that 50% of the profits from “Shake It Off” are attributable to the phrases “players play” and “haters hate” that songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler claim were stolen from their 2001 song “Playas Gon’ Play,” written for the all-female R&B trio 3LW.
Swift, who believes the lines are in the public domain, also contends that the disputed expert, Bob Kohn, should be prevented from expressing his view that Swift’s song would lose all “force, purpose, and vitality” if the phrases were removed.
As per Rolling Stone, “[Kohn] is a lawyer who plays no musical instruments and claims expertise because he saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and—like most if not all of us—listens to music,” argues a new motion filed Monday on Taylor Swift’s behalf by Davis Wright Tremaine lawyers Peter Anderson, Sean M. Sullivan, and Eric Lamm.
“His deposition evidence reveals he is just making it up as he goes along,” the attorneys claimed of Kohn, a New York-based attorney who wrote a book on music licensing.
Swift’s petition also contends that a musicology professor at George Washington University, who is also scheduled to testify for Hall and Butler, has no background in “comparative literary analysis.
” Swift’s team contends that such knowledge is required since the complaint makes no allegation about the musical composition of “Shake It Off,” just its “substantially identical” lyrics.
“He does not comprehend the methods used in the comparative linguistic study of two works.” He also does not teach literature or poetry, and he has never written a song or lyrics,” according to the motion.
The action was first rejected by U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald in 2018, but it was resurrected on appeal and remanded to his court by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Taylor Swift’s plea to ban the experts has yet to be decided by Judge Fitzgerald.
“Taylor Swift and the other defendants have filed hundreds of motions in order to avoid going to trial on the merits of this case.” “We trust the court will see through this deluge of documents and allow justice to shine,” Hall and Butler’s lawyer Gerard Fox said in a statement to Rolling Stone on Wednesday.
The allegedly infringing words in Hall and Butler’s song are “playas, they going to play” and “haters, they going to hate.” Taylor Swift and her attorneys claim that the brief phrases are free for anybody to use. “Because the players are going to play, play, play, play, and the haters are going to hate, hate, hate, hate, hate,” the words of the song say. Swift’s representative earlier described the lawsuit as a “shakedown.”
“These persons are not the originators or authors of the popular terms ‘Players,’ ‘Haters,’ or combinations thereof. “They did not coin these terms, nor were they the first to utilize them in a song,” a representative for the band told Rolling Stone. “Their claim is a crusade for Mr. Hall’s money account, not for all creatives.”
