Two Vanished Paragraphs Muddy Taylor Swift ‘Shake It Off’ Ruling

The Ninth Circuit’s order reviving a copyright infringement lawsuit against music superstar Taylor Swift was startlingly brief: four paragraphs. Five weeks later, two of them disappeared.

The edit didn’t change the outcome, meaning Swift will still have to return to California district court to argue her hit “Shake It Off” didn’t rip off a 2001 song’s lyric about haters and players. But copyright attorneys find the judges’ actions unusual, saying the remaining two paragraphs don’t provide much clarity on an increasingly important aspect of the law in a circuit home to much of the recording industry.

“They took out the ...