This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Taylor Swift beats a copyright case that her lawyers say “never should have been filed”; Lizzo faces a sexual harassment lawsuit from former tour dancers; a Cardi B concertgoer files a police report after the star throws a microphone at a Las Vegas show; and much more.
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THE BIG STORY: Taylor Swift Beats Copyright Lawsuit
“This person might as well sue anyone who’s ever written a diary or made a scrap book.”
That’s what Aaron Moss, a veteran music litigator at the firm Greenberg Glusker, told me last August, when Teresa La Dart first sued Taylor Swift for copyright infringement. The case claimed that Swift’s companion book for her album Lover had borrowed several key elements from La Dart’s self-published book of poetry, also called Lover.
The problem? That La Dart was essentially suing Swift over stock book design elements, including the use of “pastel pinks and blues,” as well as an image of the author “photographed in a downward pose.” She also alleged that Swift copied the book’s “format,” namely “a recollection of past years memorialized in a combination of written and pictorial components.”
That kind of stuff isn’t covered by copyrights – and experts said the case against Swift probably bordered on frivolous: “This lawsuit should be thrown out on a motion to dismiss, if the plaintiff’s lawyer doesn’t think better of it and voluntarily withdraw the complaint first,” Moss said at the time.
One year later, those predictions have come true. Go read our entire story on the end of the lawsuit against Swift, including the arguments from Taylor’s lawyers about how the case “never should have been filed.”
Other top stories…
HARASSMENT CASE AGAINST LIZZO – The star and her Big Grrrl Big Touring Inc. were hit with allegations from three former dancers who claimed they were subjected to sexual harassment and a hostile work environment, including being pressured to touch nude dancers during a live sex show. They also claimed Lizzo “called attention” to a dancer’s weight gain – a particularly loaded allegation against an artist who has made body positivity a central aspect of her personal brand.
ACTIVISION ISN’T PLAYING GAMES – Video game giant Activision filed a lawsuit against a prominent TikTok music critic named Anthony Fantano, accusing him of running a “scheme” to demand “extortionate” settlements over a heavily-memed video he created. Activision says Fantanto intentionally uploaded the audio from his “enough slices” video into TikTok’s free sound library, but now is unfairly threatening to sue the company and others for using it: “A textbook example of how intellectual property law can be misused.”
CARDI’S VEGAS MICROPHONE TOSS – A concertgoer filed a police report after Cardi B was captured on video at a Las Vegas event throwing her microphone at a fan who splashed her with a drink. Though police did not mention Cardi by name, the report (alleging battery) was filed by an individual who claimed to have been “struck by an item that was thrown from the stage” at the venue where the star was performing.
ASTROWORLD REPORT RELEASED – The Houston Police Department released the 1,200-page+ police report on the deadly 2021 crowd crush disaster at Astroworld, offering a full accounting of the chaos that left 10 people dead and hundreds injured. The report features transcripts of calls to 911, summaries of police interviews, and reams of text messages from that night: “I know they’ll try to fight through it but I would want it on the record that I didn’t advise this to continue,” said one festival official. “Someone’s going to end up dead.”
MATTY HEALY MALAYSIA KISS FALLOUT – The 1975 and lead singer Matty Healy could be facing legal action after he kissed a male bandmate on stage at a concert in Malaysia and sharply criticized the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies. The stunt – criticized by some local gay rights activists as counterproductive – resulted in the Malaysian government canceling the rest of the three-day Good Vibes Festival, citing Healy’s “controversial conduct and remarks.”
LAST CALL FOR PRE-1972 SONGS – More than nine years after members of the 1960s rock band The Turtles filed a series of groundbreaking lawsuits over the legal protections for so-called pre-1972 sound recordings, a federal judge dismissed their final case — a lawsuit against Pandora that he called the band’s “last case standing.”
JOHN SUMMIT ENDS NAME CONTROVERSY – DJ John Summit vowed to change the name of his new record label (Off The Grid) and apologized after a brief – but very public — legal dispute with a smaller company that had been using the name for dance music events for the better part of a decade.
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