Fans were overjoyed when Taylor Swift released Evermore, her second surprise album of 2020. But the same cannot be said about Evermore Park, an amusement park in Utah who filed a trademark lawsuit against the singer following the album’s release. After dismissing the initial lawsuit as “baseless,” Swift’s team is now responding with a lawsuit of their own.
According to a report from Rolling Stone, TAS Rights Management, the company that manages the rights to Swift’s music and other trademarks, filed an opposing lawsuit against Evermore Park. Swift’s team is basing their lawsuit on the claim that Evermore Park has used three of the pop singer’s songs without authorization. Legal documents from Swift’s team allege that the theme park “blatantly ignored the numerous notices from BMI and opted instead to continue to benefit from the free and unauthorized public performance of [the songs], despite actual knowledge of the liability and substantial penalties imposed by the Copyright Act to protect artists.” The lawsuit goes on to claim that Evermore’s CEO Ken Bretschneider reached out to BMI “seeking a retroactive license that would cover all performances” from 2018-2021 only after he learned that Swift’s countersuit was in the works.
The TAS Rights Management lawsuit arrives less than a month after Evermore’s original copyright infringement lawsuit, which claimed that some of their guests have asked if “the Evermore album was the result of a collaboration between Evermore and Taylor Swift or some other type of relationship.” Evemore is seeking millions in damages, as well as money to cover all legal fees.
