Kanye West Uses the Nietzsche Defense in Copyright Infringement Case

Posted on November 24, 2011

Now this is what we call creative thinking. Kanye West invoked what should now be known as the Nietzshe Defense in his songwriting copyright case. Kanye is being sued for allegedly stealing his song "Stronger" from songwriter Vincent Peters. The claim against him was dismissed by the lower court.

Both songs derive their chorus from Nietzshe's maxim "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." Both songs rhyme "stronger" with "wronger." The songs also both mention model Kate Moss. Peters gave a copy of his song to Kanye's manager, then Kanye came out with his own song. But the judge found there was not enough similarity between the two songs to merit a lawsuit. Now the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals must rule on whether to uphold that dismissal.

In the appellate brief submitted by Kanye's attorneys, Kanye argues that a current songwriter cannot sue for copyright infringement of lyrics based on a maxim written by 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

You can read the brief, which has a nice summation of current case law as it applies to songwriting here in .pdf format. The moral of this story is: it is difficult to prevail in a lawsuit for copyright infringement of song lyrics.