A day after he released his new album, Astavista, and his upcoming world tour, Childish Gambino triumphed over a legal headache he has suffered since 2021.
Billboard reported that a federal appeals court has rejected a lawsuit that has accused Gambino, formally known as Donald Glover, of ripping off his Grammy-winning song "This Is America," from a 2016 song titled "Made in America" by rapper Kidd Wess.
The lawsuit has since been dismissed in 2023, but it was brought to an appellate court. However, the reasons for rejection of the appeal were different.
In the 2023 ruling, the court ruled in favor of Glover because the two songs were "entirely different." However, in the recent appellate ruling, it was pointed out that Wess, formally known as Emelike Nwosuocha, had failed to secure the proper copyrights on his track necessary to safeguard it.
"Nwosuocha's problem is that his copyright registration is simply for the wrong work," the ruling read. "That distinction is important."
The judge wrote in the ruling that a "distinction" exists between a sound recording and a musical work.
"That statutory distinction is important because sound recordings and musical works are different artistic works that can be copyrighted by different creators and are infringed in different ways," the judge explained.
The ruling emphasized that the case failed because Nwosuocha had only secured a copyright registration of the song's recording, not the composition, which he claimed Glover had copied.
Even if he had secured a copyright registration for the composition, the judge explained that "dismissal would be warranted" because the elements of the "Made In America" "are not substantially similar" to "This Is America."
In 2021, Nwosuocha sued Glover for the "unmissable" similarities between the almost similarly titled songs. He argued that "Made In America" has a similar flow to "This Is America."
"A cursory comparison with the challenged composition reveals that the content of the choruses is entirely different and not substantially similar. More could be said on the ways these songs differ, but no more airtime is needed to resolve this case," the judge has decided at the time.
Listen and compare the two songs below.
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