It seems that the Evermore theme park's ploy has backfired
Taylor Swift has long since proven that she is someone who will not take certain matters lying down.
As you may recall, a few years ago Swift scuppered her former arch-nemesis Katy Perry's album release date by re-instating her entire back catalogue on Spotify on the very same day.
She is also in the midst of remedying the small matter of someone else owning the rights to most of her back catalogue, by re-recording all of her older albums.
Now, the latest twist in her legal woes comes in the wake of a US theme park which recently filed a lawsuit against the pop star. Evermore, a theme park in Utah, alleged trademark infringement after Swift's latest album of the same name was released and is looking for millions in damages and all legal fees to be paid. They claim that it has led to their patrons being confused, and say that it has had an adverse effect on the park's searchability on Google.
Now, however, the company responsible for handling Swift's trademark and music rights, has countersued the theme park. Why? They claim that Evermore played her music on its grounds “without authorisation or license agreement.”
In their counter-suit, they include documents from music performance rights organisation BMI that warns them that playing music publicly falls under copyright laws – and that Evermore had received letters informing them of the same and billing them for a certain period. They specifically mention Swift’s songs 'Love Story', 'You Belong With Me' and 'Bad Blood.'
BMI allegedly attempted to contact Evermore via emails, letters and phone calls since 2019, but they did not respond until they learned that this latest legal twist was ensuing.
Seems like an open-and-shut case of the Streisand effect to us.