Taylor Swift trademarks her lyrics

[Jonny Come Lately]

This isn't the type of music I normally like to talk about but I thought this was quite an interesting development. More info on this story here (if this link doesn't work please let me know):

BBC News - Taylor Swift trademarks lyrics such as 'sick beat'

Really not too sure about this - I can understand why she (or her 'people') want to prevent these phrases being used to sell phoney merchandise but I fear this could be a bit of a slippery slope, with the potential being there to trademark the most banal and ordinary of phrases. Not sure why she feels any need to do this, these songs are very recent and could be forgotten 5-10 years from now. I'm not sure of any of these lyrics are likely to become catchphrases, apart from the (absolutely awful IMO) 'sick beats' one which was around before she used it anyway.

One of my first thoughts when I read this was that Robert Plant/Led Zeppelin would have been in even bigger trouble had Willie Dixon trademarked the lyrics they 'borrowed from You Need Love!

 

[Soot and Stars]

It's bad enough that chords, notes and very minute parts in songs can be taken to court. I find it hilarious that when it happened with Zeppelin everyone thought it was ridiculous but when a Soul and Pop singer traverses into that territory EVERYONE agrees. Tom Petty who I thought had better things to do sued Sam Smith for an unintentional small part in this song saying it stole from "Won't Back Down". IMO if you know both songs and can only hear it after you are told it was an issue then it's not close enough. There's only so many combinations an artist can make and lyrically that's a very slippery slope.

Stay With Me

 

[Sunny]

You're right Soots, I thought Tom Petty would have been a bigger man than that.