Taylor Swift is dealing with a lawsuit over her final album, The Lifetime of a Showgirl—from a fellow showgirl.
Within the grievance, filed on Monday, Las Vegas-based performer Maren Wade claims that Swift’s hit album bears putting similarities to her personal inventive work. For years, Wade has written a column within the Las Vegas Weekly newspaper referred to as “Confessions of a Showgirl,” which she expanded right into a touring dwell present with the identical title.
On her website, Wade’s present is described as a “one-woman comedic cabaret [featuring] the quirky and hilarious world of a modern-day Vegas showgirl.” Wade additionally carried out on NBC’s America’s Acquired Expertise in 2014, the identical yr her column started operating within the different weekly newspaper. Wade registered her “Confessions of a Showgirl” model with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace in 2015.
“Over the course of a decade, CONFESSIONS OF A SHOWGIRL grew right into a model encompassing performances, writing, and digital media—constructed by one particular person, metropolis by metropolis, and present by present,” Wade says within the complaint, which factors to the thematic and aesthetic similarities between Swift’s album title and her personal present.
“Each share the identical construction, the identical dominant phrase, and the identical general business impression,” the grievance states. Wade argues that after years of toiling to construct her personal showgirl-themed model, Swift’s album launch instantly overwhelmed her long-established trademark, drowning it out and giving customers the impression that “the unique is the imitation.” “What Plaintiff had constructed over twelve years, Defendants threatened to swallow in weeks,” the grievance states.
Quick Firm reached out to Swift’s publicity crew for touch upon the brand new lawsuit however has not but obtained a response.
The Life of two Showgirls
Within the grievance, Wade claims that the USA Patent and Trademark Workplace rejected Swift’s try to register The Lifetime of a Showgirl primarily based on the danger of complicated it with Wade’s already-registered Confessions of a Showgirl trademark. Wade asserts that Swift’s huge authorized and model groups have an intimate information of trademark regulation, given Swift’s lengthy historical past of registering logos for her personal model.
“Certainly, they don’t seem to be merely conversant in trademark regulation—they’re amongst its most vigorous enforcers, having filed a number of federal actions to grab items from distributors promoting trademarked merchandise close to live performance venues,” the grievance states. “They possess direct information of the hurt that trademark infringement inflicts on a model, having leveraged that very hurt in federal courtroom when it served their pursuits to take action.”
Rapidly after the lawsuit went public, Swifties defended the artist within the common r/TaylorSwift subreddit, pointing to Wade’s previous social media posts playfully referencing Swift’s final album. In a number of the posts, Wade included #TheLifeOfAShowgirl and #TS12, two hashtags referencing Swift’s music. Wade requested the courtroom to dam Swift’s use of the “Showgirl” branding and drive Swift to surrender all income earned from “The Lifetime of a Showgirl,” which introduced in an estimated $135 million throughout its first week alone.
Swift, who hit billionaire standing in 2023, instructions a famously huge assortment of logos for her enterprise empire. In February, Swift asked the U.S. authorities to dam a house items firm’s branding for a line of bedding referred to as “Swift Residence.” Within the submitting, Swift’s authorized crew accuses the Swift Residence model of deliberately imitating one in all Swift’s trademark logos, a signature with a swoopy cursive “S.”
