Don’t F*ck With Taylor Swift!

And the folks did.

Is Friday, May eighth, and Taylor Swift has just delivered a legal lol if you've ever seen one, in response to being sued over her.

Life of a Showgirl album.

And with that, Welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ, in which I cannot believe I am saying my favorite story of the day.

It's a Taylor Swift story. Robes. I've told you this first thing this morning.

Yeah, and I already wrote the title for this episode based on something you said the moment you got into reading all of the articles written about this, you said, don't f with Taylor Swift.

Don't don't she will bite back.

This is it's legal. She's being protected.

But some of the language in here and the direction they went and how hard they went and all this is her lawyers, and you know she's as protected as anybody. It just makes it fast and also fascinating.

Roads.

This is all over the idea of copyright infringement. And she is the most notorious protector of her copyright.

Yeah, she's been in the news over the last few years trying to get her own damn music back and control it. She even went so far as to re record it. Yes, so she knows probably more than anyone how important ownership of your own property it's and in this case, well, let's just say her lawyers are very well versed as well.

Yes, cause they're calling bs on a lawsuit that was brought by a former Vegas showgirl. She claims that Taylor Swift's latest album infringes on her trademark and rose we covered this initially in the morning run in talking about this story, and we thought it was a stretch, like are you kidding? The two names aren't the same. You all clearly aren't competing and on the same level after

Yes, so this is a woman named Maren Flagg. She filed this original lawsuit back in March, where the lawsuit claims that Taylor Swift's albums quote shared the same structure, same dominant impression, and same overall commercial impression. Both are used in overlapping markets and are directed at the same customers. It's because her Maren Flags show, or just what she does. She calls it confessions of a Showgirl.

Yeah, and she trademarked it back in the day. She's had that trademark since twenty fifteen, Confessions of a Showgirl. She has a newsletter she's been doing for a long time, she has a cabaret sho and she also has this podcast. All of those things have Confessions of a Showgirl attached to it. Oh and, by the way, Taylor Swift did attempt to trademark Life of a Showhirl, but was rejected because it was too similar to Confessions of a Showgirl.

All right.

So then, when you have basically Maren's statement about why this is so important, she talks specifically about how similar the two are and how confusing it is. So here is what her attorney stated. Maren spent more than a decade building Confessions of a Showgirl. She registered it, she earned it. When Taylor Swift's team applied to register the Life of a Showgirl, the trademark office refused, finding Swift's

That's what this case is about. I'm curious.

Could Marin and her legal name is Maren Wade even though her no, sorry, her stage name is Maren Wade, even though her real name is Maren Flagg. But could she have been could her team of attorneys been alerted to the fact that Taylor Swift was trying to get a trademark similar to hers, and that could have sparked the idea for a lawsuit.

I don't know if they that's a good question. I don't know if they give you a heads up. Hey, somebody is trying to I mean, I assume people try and they fail all the time every day trying to trademark something that's already trademarked.

So maybe not.

We can't even probably mark our own names at this point because someone else has beaten us to it.

Certainly with the race to getting a website.

People steal famous people's names all the time, so that could I don't know how much of an heads up you get about any of that.

But they didn't get one and maybe didn't want one until the Life of a Showgirl became the biggest album in history. I do believe so all of this happened and rose. When we first heard the story, we thought it was a stretch, this little thing going on in Las Vegas. No disrespect to her, but she's a smaller town performer in any comparison. Even though though the names weren't even the same, Life of a Showgirl Confessions of a Showgirl, I didn't think.

They are similar. Yeah.

I wouldn't have thought so either.

And it is a little shocking to hear that Taylor Swift's application for a trademark didn't go through because of this smaller operation.

So okay, but man, her attorneys have now turned this story in Robes. There were some things we didn't understand when we first heard about the lawsuit, but they are pointing out they have gone after this woman in such a way that is brutal in a court filing. And they are saying, Robes that she is the one who was infringing on Taylor Swift's album, and she was the one trying to use Taylor Swift's album to prop up her own brand.

So how are you gonna come and sue us?

Now?

Yeah, Oftentimes the best defense is an offense, correct, and that's exactly what Taylor Swift's attorneys are doing here in their response to this lawsuit.

But the response was direct, not quite You know, it was insulting without being insulting.

Well, you were laughing out loud as you were reading it.

They were essentially saying, Robes that you're saying that you all mark it to similar audiences and do similar things, and in some way the audience is gonna get your confessions of a showgirl confused with life of a showgirl, and they will say it in just the most eloquent legal fashion.

Yes, here's what Taylor's attorney said. Plaintiff attempts to broadly lump her cabaret sho and defendant's musical album together as quote entertainment services. That comparison is absurd. Flag performs if at all, in small intimate venues such as a fifty five plus active community, fifty five plus golf resort RV and golf resort, ninety seat cabaret style venue that offers dinner, hotel,

Why private supper club gets me private.

Supper clubs because you get an idea of just look to not use a proper legal terma like a rinky dink venue, and that's kind of what they're referring to, this very small time rinky dink audience in small supper clubs. No one's getting it confused with Taylor Swift and if they do good for her, actually.

Good for her, and she Robes certainly thought that would be good for her, according to Swift's attorneys, and according to stuff that's been out there that you could go easily verify. Apparently Robes this woman has for a long time, since we first heard and saw the art and the title of this album, has been trying to attach herself to.

Life of a show Yes, Taylor's attorneys say.

Since the album announcement, Plaintiff has reframed her brand around the album, flooding her social media accounts with posts attempting to align herself with Miss Swift and the album. Prior to the album announcement, Playtoniff never used the Life of a Showgirl in her social media promotion. Following the announcement, Plaintiff used the phrase or posted generally about Miss Swift or the album over forty times on her branded Instagram and TikTok.

Accounts, Okay, that doesn't sound good, not at all.

No, And in fact, they go on even further to say, far from showing any concern about the album. After its announcement, Miss Flagg spent several months centering her brand on the life of a showgirl's name, artwork, music, and lyrics to promote her little known cabaret show. In fact, a mere four days after Miss Swift announced her album title and artwork, in August of twenty twenty five, Miss Flag announced a new podcast mimicking Miss Swift's album artwork, logo, title, and taglines.

I mean it's hilarious outuch. Will a judge listen to that? Like just because she tried to use it? Like, is that enough to say, get out of my court, wasting my time?

I think I don't.

It's she tried to use it to her benefit and now she's trying to somehow claim it's hurt her.

That's the problem.

How do you use and try to take basically a similar name to your advantage and then claim that that similar name has brought you some sort of disadvantage.

It's amazing that you just took the conversation there.

Stay with us.

I'm going to answer that question, and it's an argument, Robes that many say the former Vegas show girl has an upside on. Stay here, all right, Welcome back to this episode of Amy and TJ. I have been wiping tears out of my eyes. Robeses giving me a hard time.

He actually is still wiping tears.

He every time you say supper club, he just starts laughing so hard he can't stop.

It's so ridiculous because I find I can see the pettiness in it, and I see the sarcasm, and I appreciate they listed something factual that still made their point. Are you kidding me? You think somebody's going to confuse you with this woman?

And if they do, that's only going to help you?

Oh man, Okay, I don't know why this story is so hilarious to me, But Rose, I want to pick up on the point you were making, Like, what argument can you try to make?

Isn't this only beneficial to yes?

Your celebrif you would want to be confused with Taylor Swift, if people thought that you were in some way affiliated with her, that would only help your brand, one would think.

One would think.

But some will make the argument and she will that it goes the opposite way that yes, Taylor Swift is hurting her brand because this happens that there are times where the imitator outdoes the original. So now Taylor Swift has overwhelmed the world with this phrase life of a showgirl. That diminishes her brand or her ability to get seen as anything on her own. Now there might be a stretch, it might be better examples out there of it, But that's a thing that is talked about in these cases.

She's tried to at least.

And look, Taylor Swift's team has already, as we've kind of alluded to, on going on the defense, is considering going on the offense because they are now saying that they may file their own lawsuit against this woman, saying each of these advertisements constitutes actionable infringement and they will be pursuing appropriate remedies for that. So with the very least there's going to be a conversation between legal teams.

Yeah, that could mean a lot of stuff appropriate remedies to that. This is an incredible five. But yeah, that's her production team that they plan on going after this woman for. I forgot to mention it. I haven't listed. But in addition to Maren Flag and all of her Instagram posts and changing her artwork, she literally used these hashtags, literally use those in her posts to get attention.

So in her Instagram posts, she puts hashtag Swifties, hashtag Taylor Swift, hoping that, yes, when you have an algorithm you're looking for a search you are a Taylor Swift fan, that her post would come up, and she's hoping I would argue, and I think perhaps many courts might agree, or certainly the judge looking at this case, that is completely and totally negating your lawsuit because if you are trying to use any potential confusion between those two titles

Hoping to right. The other thing here is Lady Gaga.

I want to mention she did have this issue with a surf shop somewhere that took issue with the album art she had for Mayhem. He just won that suit. It had a lot to do with them using that as merchandizing. Didn't want her to be able to sell merchandising with that on it, But she won that case. These are high bars. The other thing, they have something

Wow. So that's another thing.

And is this, honestly, I mean, I'm just curious. Is this the cost of being a highly successful artist?

Period?

They get sued every day.

People just see an opportunity to try and get something from them, get something because of them. And it's a sad state of where we are, just these frivolous lawsuits, and there's always seems like attorney's willing to take up the cause to see if they can get some sort of a payday or maybe even just a settlement from these big artists because they think, hey, this is easy pickings. We see literally an ATM when they look at some

Yes, she is asking for monetary services. The last thing, Rose, I'm meant to pull this up for you and show it to you. Taylor Swift has by some count I think, one hundred and sixty trademarks on names.

This is the list.

She's even trademarked TS and it's specific for certain certain things. The Life of a show Girl Swifty Swift Muss is actually trademarked Wow, the Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Khn all these things.

It's a long, long list.

This is this is what you have to do. That's what you have to do to protect yourself. Wow, my goodness.

All right, well, I'm glad at least you got a solid laugh, a belly laugh for two out of this one.

You don't find suffer clubs every day.

And with that everyone, we hope you enjoy the rest of your day today.

I'm Aye Robot alongside TJ.

Holmes.

We'll talk soon.