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Taylor Swift and Evermore theme park settle legal battle
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 25 March 2021
The greatest legal battle in living memory is sadly over without ever getting to trial. Taylor Swift and the theme park Evermore Park have agreed to drop their respective lawsuits against each other. And without any money changing hands either.
“As a resolution of both lawsuits, the parties will drop and dismiss their respective suits without monetary settlement”, a spokesperson for Swift confirmed to Rolling Stone last night.
We first learned of this dispute, as if you could forget, back in February, when the Tennessee theme park sued Swift, saying that her ‘Evermore’ album – released in December – infringed on its trademarks.
Its management said that people instantly became confused when the record was released, assuming that there was some connection between it and the theme park. They also claimed that people had started going to Swift’s website to buy her merch instead of the park’s – something refuted by Swift and her legal team.
Swift then countered Evermore’s lawsuit with her own, claiming that the only reason anyone assumed a link between her and it was because the theme park had been putting on unlicensed performances of three of her songs – ‘Love Story’, ‘You Belong With Me’ and ‘Bad Blood’ – as a “central attraction” since 2018.
She further claimed that Evermore Park ignored “numerous notices” from collecting society BMI regarding the alleged copyright infringement resulting from those performances. Then, her lawsuit went on, as Evermore Park launched its litigation last month, it contacted BMI asking for a retrospective licence to cover past uses of her songs. This, she said, proved that the park was always aware of the need for a licence and was therefore liable for “willful copyright infringement”.
Details of what has been agreed in the settlement have not been made public. While no money has changed hands directly, that does not mean that the park hasn’t agreed to secure a licence for use of Swift’s music – if indeed it agrees that it needs one. Swift did seem to have the stronger case here, while Evermore’s appeared optimistic at best. It remains to be seen if the theme park offers any comment on the matter.
