A federal judge in Florida has dismissed a poet’s lawsuit alleging Taylor Swift stole her themes and ideas to write the songs “The Man,” “The Great War,” “I Can Do it with a Broken Heart” and more.
Self-published poet Kimberly Marasco alleged Swift infringed on her rights in various poems she had written between 2017 and 2021, which Swift denied.
Among the allegations in her lawsuit, which identified several Swift songs released between 2019 and 2024, Marasco claimed that Swift infringed on her poem “Ordinary Citizen” — which contained the line, “I’m running behind/ You say it’s His word against mine” — with the song “The Man,” which contains the lyric, “I’m so sick of running as fast as I can/ Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man.”
Both the poem and Swift’s song describe a woman working in a male-dominated office environment, Marasco alleged.
Marasco also alleged Swift’s song “The Great War” (with the lyrics “Diesel is desire, you were playing with fire”) infringed on her poem “The Fire” (which contains the line “Anger fuels our desire … I’m fighting fire with fire”) because both use the metaphor of “desire as fuel and fire.”
Marasco’s lawsuit also listed music producer Jack Antonoff, Republic Records, Universal Music Group and musician Aaron Dessner as defendants.
In her ruling on Tuesday, Judge Aileen Cannon wrote that these are “quintessential themes, concepts and isolated words” that copyright law does not protect.
Cannon granted Swift’s motion to dismiss, ruling that Marasco’s poems “do not contain protectable expression and that, regardless, Plaintiff has failed to plausibly plead copying.”
Tuesday’s ruling came in response to Marasco’s second amended complaint on the matter and was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be filed again.
In her decision Tuesday, Cannon wrote that the second amended complaint “closely mirrors” Marasco’s initial copyright infringement lawsuit against Swift, which was “dismissed with prejudice in September 2025 after concluding that Plaintiff had pled no protectable expression and had not plausibly alleged unlawful copying.”
“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,” Cannon wrote, referencing Marasco’s initial lawsuit. “Plaintiff has also failed to plausibly allege either access or substantial similarity, each of which is independently required to plead copying.”
ABC News has reached out to Marasco and a representative for Swift for comment.
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