Taylor Swift's lawyers had argued that the lawsuit "should never have been filed."
A Mississippi woman has dropped her copyright infringement lawsuit against Taylor Swift over her 'Lover' album book.
Teresa La Dart filed a lawsuit against Taylor Swift last year, claiming the singer copied "certain elements of the creative" from her 2010 self-published book, also called Lover.
But in a filing filed in federal court in Tennessee on Thursday (07/26), La Dart's attorney said his client is permanently withdrawing the lawsuit.
Prior to the sudden voluntary withdrawal, which appears to be a unilateral action rather than the result of a settlement, Taylor Swift's lawyers had requested that the lawsuit be dismissed, saying it was "legally and factually unfounded" and that it "should never have been filed." .
These arguments are in line with the opinion of several experienced lawyers who explained to Billboard that Teresa La Dart's lawsuit was seriously flawed.
The lawyers said that La Dart was essentially suing Taylor Swift for elements that could not be monopolized by a single author: "This person could very well sue anyone who has written a diary or made a scrapbook."
With La Dart faced with such strong counterarguments, it may have been in her financial interest to drop the lawsuit.
If she went ahead with the lawsuit and ultimately lost, the court could have ordered her to pay Taylor Swift's side as compensation for legal costs – an amount that could run into the tens of thousands of dollars.
Teresa La Dart filed a lawsuit against Taylor Swift in August 2022 over the book that accompanied the pop star's 2019 album 'Lover'.
Each version of Taylor Swift's book, which came out in four different editions, included a total of 120 pages of notes from the singer's personal diary and previously unpublished photographs she had selected.
The lawsuit claimed that Taylor Swift had borrowed certain visual elements from Teresa La Dart's book, such as "pastel pink and blue colors" and the author's photo, which appears "in a down position."
La Dart also claimed copyright for the book's overall structure, including "the gathering of memories of years gone by with a combination of written and pictorial elements" and "intermediate photographs and writings".
But there was just one problem: In their response in February, Taylor Swift's lawyers said that these elements were nothing more than common features of almost any book, so they weren't unique enough to be protected by copyright law.
"This is a lawsuit that should never have been filed," commented attorney Doug Baldridge on behalf of Taylor Swift.
"These elements, each of which is a generic form of design, are not subject to copyright protection. Therefore, the defendants could not have infringed the plaintiff's copyright," he underlined.
The motion to dismiss remained pending when Teresa La Dart moved to withdraw the lawsuit Thursday.
La Dart's attorney, William S. Parks, did not make a statement, but after Taylor Swift's side responded in February, he defended the filing of the lawsuit.
"Miss La Dart has questions that I hope will eventually be answered about the similarities she sees between the two works," Parks said at the time.
“Unfortunately, he felt it necessary to bring this lawsuit in order to potentially receive such answers. We will see what the judge decides at this point," he added.
