Taylor Swift is asking a court to make a pair of songwriters pay her $72,276, the amount she paid out in legal fees to fight their lawsuit against her, which claimed she lifted their material from the 2001 song Playas Gon' Play for her 2014 hit Shake It Off without compensating them.
Lawyers for the 28-year-old said in court docs filed Friday said that they told the songwriters, Nathan Butler and Sean Hall, that suing them would be ill-advised, The Blast reported.
The songwriters attempted in vain to get Swift to pay $30 million before filing the lawsuit, her lawyers said in court docs.
Butler and Hall did not follow the warnings from Swift's lawyers, and the Grammy-winning singer's team said the songwriters then 'sought tens of millions of dollars and the loss of Shake It Off.'
In dismissing the case, the judge ruled, 'In order for such short phrases to be protected under the Copyright Act, they must be more creative than the lyrics at issue here,' according to the outlet.
Butler and Hall, in their lawsuit filed last year, claimed the Grammy-winner took up to 20 percent of the 2001 song Playas Gon’ Play, TMZ reported, to compose the mega-hit.
Playas Gon' Play performed by 3LW - the trio of Adrienne Bailon, Kiely Williams, and Naturi Naughton - rose up to the 81st spot on Billboard's Hot 100 in the spring of 2001.
Hall and Butler's lyrics read, 'Playas, they gonna play/ And haters, they gonna hate/ Ballers, they gonna ball/ Shot callers, they gonna call.'
Shake It Off - a number one hit in August of 2014 - included the lyrics: 'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play/ And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate / Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake I shake it off, I shake it off.'
In addition to the commercial success, the song was a hit with critics, as she received three Grammy nominations for it at the 2015 Grammys: Record of the Year, Song of the Year and best Pop Solo Performance.
Hall and Butler are both accomplished industry mainstays who have collaborated with big name artists, as Butler's worked with Backstreet Boys and Victoria Beckham, while Hall's worked with Justin Bieber and Pink.
