Taylor Swift Lawyers Shred Trademark Claims by Vegas Showgirl

Photo Credit: Taylor Swift by Jana Beamer / CC by 2.0

Taylor Swift’s legal team launches a counterattack against a former Vegas showgirl, accusing her of clout-chasing with her trademark infringement claim.

Taylor Swift’s legal team has officially opposed an injunction request from former Vegas showgirl Maren Wade, who filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Swift earlier this year over the title of her 2025 album, The Life of a Showgirl. The attorneys labeled her lawsuit “meritless” and “absurd,” and claimed it was an attempt to exploit Swift’s fame for a “marketing boost” for her own brand.

Maren Wade, whose legal name is Maren Flagg, filed her lawsuit in March in the United States District Court in California. She owns the trademark for “Confessions of a Showgirl,” which she has owned since 2015 and used since writing a column in Las Vegas Weekly in 2014. The brand has expanded into a podcast and a live cabaret show.

In her filing, Flagg claimed that Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl infringed upon her trademark and created unfair competition for her own brand. The suit even cites that when Swift applied to register her trademark for the album, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office initially declined because it found it was too similar to Flagg’s existing trademark.

Flagg asked for a preliminary injunction to immediately prevent Swift from further use of her “Showgirl” brand. But Swift’s team is known for being aggressively litigious, and they wasted no time in clapping back with a filing of their own.

“This motion, just like Maren Flagg’s lawsuit, should never have been filed,” they wrote. “It is simply Ms. Flagg’s latest attempt to use Taylor Swift’s name and intellectual property to prop up her brand.”

According to their opposition, Swift’s lawyers say that Flagg actually used Swift’s music and lyrics to promote her “Confessions of a Showgirl” stage show. They further threatened to pursue remedies for the “commercial misuse” of Swift’s intellectual property.

The filing also asserts that there is “no chance” of consumer confusion between the two brands, citing the legendary attention to detail of Swift’s devoted fans, and noting the vast difference between a “small, intimate” cabaret act and Swift’s global stadium performances. “That comparison is absurd,” her lawyers wrote.

Swift’s team also asks the judge to consider why Flagg is asking for immediate relief on the basis of irreparable damage to her brand a whole eight months after the album was first announced. They argue that Flagg in fact spent several of those months attempting to associate herself more closely with Swift’s “Showgirl” branding in her own.

“Since the album announcement, plaintiff has reframed her brand around the album, flooding her social media accounts with posts attempting to align herself with Ms. Swift and the album,” the filing reads. “Prior to the album announcement, plaintiff had never used ‘the life of a showgirl’ in her social media promotion. Following the announcement, plaintiff used the phrase or posted generally about Ms. Swift or the album over 40 times on her branded Instagram and TikTok accounts.”

“In fact, a mere four days after Ms. Swift announced her album title and artwork in August 2025, Ms. Flagg announced a brand-new podcast mimicking Ms. Swift’s album artwork, logo, title, and taglines. Then, plaintiff flooded her Instagram and TikTok pages with 40+ advertisements for her brand using Ms. Swift’s music, trademarks, and other intellectual property without permission.”

Each of these, the brief claims, constitutes actionable infringement, and that TAS Rights Management “will be pursuing appropriate remedies for that.”