A federal judge in Florida dismissed a self-published poet's copyright infringement lawsuit against Taylor Swift with prejudice, ruling that the poet's work contains no protectable expression and that she never plausibly alleged Swift copied anything. It was the second time the court reached the same conclusion.
Judge Aileen Cannon granted Swift's motion to dismiss the case brought by Kimberly Marasco, a self-published poet who claimed Swift lifted themes and ideas from her poems to write multiple hit songs. The dismissal, with prejudice, means Marasco cannot refile. She told ABC News by email that she has already filed an appeal.
The ruling lands a clean, common-sense result in a case that tested how far copyright law can stretch. And the answer, at least in this courtroom, is clear: you cannot own a theme.
This was not Marasco's first attempt. ABC News reported that Marasco's initial copyright infringement lawsuit against Swift, referred to in court filings as "Marasco I", was dismissed with prejudice in September 2025. The court concluded at that time that Marasco had pled no protectable expression and had not plausibly alleged unlawful copying.
Marasco then filed a second amended complaint. Judge Cannon found it "closely mirrors" the original suit. The same deficiencies persisted. The same result followed.
In her ruling, Judge Cannon wrote:
"As this Court already determined in Marasco I, the allegedly infringed material, basic ideas, themes, metaphors, isolated words, and short phrases, is not protected expression and cannot be infringed. Plaintiff has also failed to plausibly allege either access or substantial similarity, each of which is independently required to plead copying."
That language is worth reading carefully. The court did not simply say the poems were different from the songs. It said the material Marasco claimed was stolen, themes, metaphors, isolated words, sits outside the boundary of what copyright law protects in the first place.
Marasco wrote her poems between 2017 and 2021. The Swift songs at issue were released between 2019 and 2024. The lawsuit named specific songs including "The Man," "The Great War," and "I Can Do it with a Broken Heart," among others. Marasco's poems cited in the complaint included "Ordinary Citizen" and "The Fire."
The suit named five defendants: Swift, music producer Jack Antonoff, musician Aaron Dessner, Republic Records, and Universal Music Group. Swift denied the allegations. Her representatives did not respond to ABC News's request for comment at the time of publication.
Swift, who recently married Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden over Fourth of July weekend, has faced no shortage of legal attention alongside her commercial dominance. But this particular claim never gained traction on the merits.
Judge Cannon's ruling reinforces a bedrock principle of copyright law that courts have upheld for decades: ideas, themes, and common phrases are not ownable. Only the specific creative expression of those ideas, the particular arrangement of words, the original structure, the distinctive voice, qualifies for protection.
Cannon described the allegedly infringed material as "quintessential themes, concepts and isolated words." That phrasing matters. It signals the court viewed Marasco's claims as falling well short of the threshold, not as a close call.
The ruling also addressed a second, independent failure. Even setting aside the question of protectable expression, Marasco did not plausibly allege that Swift or her collaborators ever had access to the poems or that the songs bore substantial similarity to them. Copyright infringement requires both elements. Marasco established neither.
The legal world around Swift and her circle has extended well beyond this case. Travis Kelce, for instance, fought a secret trademark lawsuit in the days before the couple's wedding, a reminder that celebrity intellectual property disputes are a constant feature of life at that level of fame.
What makes this case notable is not the outcome, courts dismiss weak copyright claims regularly, but the persistence. Marasco filed a second amended complaint that, by the court's own description, closely mirrored the first one. The same arguments. The same material. The same gaps.
Filing a substantially identical complaint after a dismissal with prejudice is not a strategy. It is a waste of the court's time. And the court said as much, implicitly, by noting the overlap and reaching the identical conclusion.
Marasco told ABC News she has filed an appeal. The specific court and grounds for that appeal remain unclear. But given that two rounds of briefing produced the same ruling on the same legal deficiencies, the path forward looks steep.
The wedding that brought Swift into the headlines most recently also generated its own legal and contractual drama. Madison Square Garden fired employees who broke the wedding NDA, a sign of how aggressively the Swift operation guards its perimeter.
Copyright trolling, whether by individuals or corporations, imposes real costs. Defendants must hire lawyers, file motions, and wait months or years for resolution. Even when a claim is meritless, it consumes resources and attention. Swift and her co-defendants had the means to fight. A smaller artist might not.
Courts that apply the law clearly and dismiss weak claims early serve an important function. They protect the system from being weaponized by litigants who confuse inspiration with infringement, or who believe that writing about similar themes entitles them to a share of someone else's commercial success.
That is not how copyright works. And Judge Cannon's ruling, twice, made that plain.
The personal side of Swift's life has drawn nearly as much public fascination as her legal battles. Blake Lively's conspicuous absence from the wedding guest list generated its own wave of coverage, illustrating that when you operate at Swift's scale, every decision, legal or social, becomes public property.
Several questions linger. The full list of Swift songs and Marasco poems cited in the complaint has not been made public beyond the titles mentioned in court coverage. The specific federal district in Florida where the case was adjudicated was not identified in reporting. And the basis on which Marasco claims to have filed an appeal, and to what court, remains unknown.
None of those gaps change the bottom line. The court examined the claims, found them legally insufficient on multiple independent grounds, and closed the door permanently.
You can write a poem about fire. Taylor Swift can write a song about fire. That does not make one a copy of the other, and no amount of refiling will change the law on the subject.
