A copyright lawsuit involving Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" has been dropped weeks before it was set to go to trial. AsBillboard reports, attorneys for both Swift and songwriters behind the suit jointly filed asking the judge to dismiss the case.
The suit stretches back to 2017, when Sean Hall and Nathan Butler sued claiming that Swift had stolen the "Shake It Off" lyrics from the song "Playas Gon' Play," which the pair wrote for 3LW back in 2001. Hall and Butler's lawsuit claimed that Swift had lifted the line "playas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate" from the song in the chorus of "Shake It Off," which goes: "Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate."
The suit was originally dismissed by a judge in 2018, but an appeals panel resurrected the case last year, and in December a judge ruled that it would move to a jury trial. In August, Swift responded to the plagiarism claims in a motion.
In her defense, Swift argued that she had not heard "Playas Gon' Play" until 2017 when the lawsuit was filed. "I recall hearing phrases about players play and haters hate stated together by other children while attending school in Wyomissing Hills, and in high school in Hendersonville," she wrote. "These phrases were akin to other commonly used sayings like 'don’t hate the playa, hate the game,' 'take a chill pill,' and 'say it, don’t spray it.'"
The "Shake It Off" trial was set to begin in January. It's unclear whether or not Swift and the accusers reached an outside settlement.
