Taylor Swift trademarks 1989 song lyrics including 'this sick beat' in copyright spree
No more T-shirts with 'Party like it's 1989' splashed on them without asking
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Your support makes all the difference.Those of you wanting to get slogans such as “party like it’s 1989” and “this sick beat” on your T-shirts, take note, for soon you will have to ask Taylor Swift’s permission first.
The US pop star has applied to legally trademark certain song lyrics from her bestselling album 1989.
Other phrases the 25-year-old wants to shotgun as her own include “Nice to meet you, where you been?”, “’cause we never go out of style” and “could show you incredible things”, according to database Justia.
Should permission be granted, Swift’s words will not be free for unauthorised use on a range of commercial products including clothing, toys, stationery, stickers, tattoo transfers, home décor, musical instruments and accessories, jewellery and non-medicated toiletries.
Oh and Christmas stockings, walking sticks and, urm, “harnesses and whips”, are off-limits too. In fact, marketing the phrases will be pretty much prohibited without asking, sorry.
Anyone devastated by this news (likely some more devoted Swifties), fear not. The likes of “haters gonna hate” from “Shake It Off” and “it feels like one of those nights” from “22” are safe, for the time being at least.
Swift has copyrighted words before – her name, initials and signature are all legally protected, as her the titles of her Fearless and Speak Now albums.
Her fifth album, 1989, has sold more than four million copies in the US alone since its release last October.
The “Blank Space” singer suffered a hack on her Twitter account earlier this week when a string of messages were posted in a bid to get her 51 million followers to follow other users.
These posts were quickly deleted by the service but Swift published her own response, to be met by 63,000 retweets, naturally.
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