Taylor Swift: A Lawsuit Regarding 'Lover' Design Has Been Dropped
By Taylor Hodgkins on July 27, 2023 at 7:15 PM EDT
Singer Taylor Swift secured another legal victory on Thursday morning.
The 33-year-old "Holy Ground" singer has been the target of a lawsuit regarding the design of a companion book to her 2019 LP "Lover." Last year, author Teresa La Dart sued Swift regarding the cover design of her 2010 novel of the same name.
On Thursday morning news broke that LaDart had decided to drop the lawsuit, according to Billboard Magazine, per Uproxx. LaDart had reportedly made the decision to drop the lawsuit after Swift's lawyers spoke out against it.
The "All Too Well" singer has faced multiple lawsuits over the last two years, including one for copyright infringement regarding her 2014 single, "Shake It Off."
'Swifties' also sued Ticketmaster after fans accused the outlet of "misrepresenting [fan] services and colliding with scalpers for their own profit," per our coverage. They asked for $2,500 per violation.
Prior To A Number Of 'Swifties' Lawsuit Against Ticketmaster, Swift Spoke Out Against The Ticket Giant
The controversy surrounding Ticketmaster's handling of sales for Swift's 'Eras Tour' made headlines for weeks after tickets went on sale last November. The tour, which will soon wrap up its American leg, was the "Daylight" singer's first tour since 2018.
Swift spoke out against the company in mid-November, in a statement posted to her Instagram story.
She wrote, "Well. It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans. We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in-house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it with myself and my team who care as much about my fans as I do. It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to watch mistakes happen with no recourse,” she began.
“There is a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward. I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them," the "Glitch" singer continued.
"And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get-together and sing these songs. Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means," the statement concluded. (per The Blast)
Ticketmaster would soon apologize to Swifties. The statement reiterated the unprecedented demand for tickets, and would cite the "staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn't have codes drove the unprecedented traffic to our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests- 4x our previous peak," it read in part.
According to our coverage of the apology, Ticketmaster would claim that "it would be impossible for Swift to perform the number of shows required to meet the demand even if there were no issues with the ticket sales."
Ticketmaster would continue, "Even when a high demand on sale goes flawlessly from a tech perspective, many fans are left empty-handed. For example: based on the volume of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing)... that’s a stadium show every single night for the next 2.5 years," it continued in part.
Earlier this month, CNBC reported the Eras Tour was set to earn one billion dollars in sales; the outlet would also report that these earnings have broken records.
LaDart Has Dropped Her Lawsuit Against Swift
Swift's lawyers were vocally against the lawsuit filed by La Dart.
The author's decision to drop the lawsuit is reportedly happening "months" after the "Fearless" singer's lawyers claimed the lawsuit "should have never been filed." They also added it was "legally and factually baseless."
La Dart claimed in her lawsuit that "Several creative elements" contained in the author's self-published book were allegedly "copied" in the companion book Swift had written in tandem with the album's release.
Billboard also reported that the lawsuit also claimed that Swift had "borrowed a number of visual elements" from La Dart's 2010 book such as the color scheme and the photo design of "the author being "photographed in a downward pose." La Dart also reportedly targeted Swift's diary-entry formatting as being too similar.
The lawsuit also highlights "a recollection of past years memorialized in a combination of written and pictorial components" as well as "interspersed photographs and writings" as baring questionable similarities.
