Kimberly Marasco has filed an appeal seeking to revive her copyright lawsuit against Taylor Swift.
The self-represented Florida poet lodged a notice of appeal on Tuesday (July 7), less than 48 hours after a federal judge dismissed the case with prejudice.
Marasco is asking a federal appeals court to overturn a decision that ended the second of two lawsuits she has filed against the singer over her lyrics, as first reported by Billboard.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case on Monday (July 6), finding that the resemblances Marasco identified – common metaphors, short phrases and everyday concepts such as gaslighting – were not the kind of material copyright protects.
The dismissal was with prejudice, meaning Marasco cannot refile the case.
“These are quintessential themes, concepts, and isolated words – exactly the kind of material copyright law does not protect,” Cannon wrote in her decision.
In her notice of appeal, Marasco wrote that she “seeks review of all rulings, findings, and conclusions adverse to her interests” in the order and judgment.
Her specific arguments were not set out in Tuesday‘s filing and will come in later briefing, according to Billboard.
Marasco had signaled the appeal immediately after the ruling, telling USA Today: “I disagree with the decision and will be appealing it.”
Cannon gave no indication that the case was close, ruling that its shortcomings were defects in the underlying poems that no amendment could fix. Such appeals face long odds, Billboard noted, particularly where a trial court has ruled in those terms.
In a December motion to dismiss, longtime Swift attorney Douglas Baldridge wrote that the claims were “absurd and legally baseless,” and described the suit as “frivolous and harassing.”
Both of Marasco’s cases against Swift have now collapsed, ending a fight that has lasted more than two years.
Marasco first sued Swift’s company, Taylor Swift Productions, in May 2024, claiming that songs including The Man, My Tears Ricochet and Illicit Affairs had copied her poetry.
That case was dismissed in September 2025, with Cannon ruling the poems were not protectable expression – the same ground on which the second suit later fell.
She filed a second complaint in February 2025, initially seeking damages of no less than USD $25 million and widening the case to name Universal Music Group, Republic Records and Swift collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner.
Antonoff was voluntarily dropped and Dessner dismissed over improper service before Cannon‘s ruling.
In her filings, Marasco mapped individual poems onto individual songs, arguing that The Man reused metaphors from a poem she titled Ordinary Citizen and that Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? drew on one she called Gaslight.
Marasco had claimed Swift copied her poems across five albums – Lover, Folklore, Evermore, Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department.
Marasco is not the first poet to take Swift to court.
In 2022, Teresa La Dart claimed the companion book to Swift’s album Lover copied elements of her own 2010 poetry collection, also titled Lover, before dropping the case in 2023.Music Business Worldwide
