Taylor Swift asks for expert witnesses to be dropped from upcoming Shake It Off trial due to lack of expertise

completemusicupdate.com:

As the song theft legal battle over Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’ continues to go through the motions, her legal team are keen to block two of the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses and limit the testimony of a third.

The experts, you see, lack expertise. Or so say Team Swift.This all relates to the US lawsuit being pursued by songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, who reckon Swift’s 2014 hit rips off their 2001 song ‘Playas Gon Play’.

The latter song, recorded by 3LW, includes the lyric “the playas gon play/them haters gonna hate”, while ‘Shake It Off’ famously includes the line “the players gonna play, play, play, play, play/and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate”.The Swift side initially got the lawsuit dismissed on the basis lyrics about players playing and haters hating were too generic to be protected by copyright in isolation.

But the litigation was reinstated by the Ninth Circuit appeals court, and subsequent efforts to get it dismissed a second time – mainly based on the same arguments as before – have been unsuccessful.With the whole matter now heading to trial, Swift’s lawyers have submitted new court papers taking issue with some of the expert witnesses that Hall and Butler’s team intend to call.