A rapper renewed his efforts to sue Donald Glover a.k.a. Childish Gambino over the hit song “This Is America” on Monday (April 15). According to Courthouse News, Kidd Wes attempted to convince a New York appeals court to revive a dismissed copyright infringement lawsuit.
Kidd Wes, whose real name is Emelike Nwosuocha, claimed Glover’s 2018 single “This Is America” was a rip-off of the lesser-known rapper’s 2016 song “Made in America.” Kidd Wess sued Glover, “This Is America” co-writer Young Thug, producer Lüdwig Goransson and more for copyright infringement in 2021.
As AllHipHop previously reported, Judge Victor Marrero dismissed the lawsuit due to a technicality. The judge said Kidd Wes failed to copyright the underlying musical composition of “Made In America.” Judge Marrero also indicated Kidd Wes would have lost with proper copyright registration.
“Even if [Kidd Wes] had a copyright registration for the composition … dismissal would be warranted here because the elements of [the] composition purportedly infringed upon are insufficiently original to warrant protection or because they are not substantially similar to the challenged Composition,” the judge noted.
Kidd Wes only obtained the copyright for the sound recording. His attorney Gregory William Keenan argued against the case getting dismissed based on an “administrative mistake.”
“An applicant for a copyright registration, especially one who’s not a lawyer, might check the wrong box on the registration documents as a result of some legal oversight,” Keenan said. “And we’re not going to expose them to invalidation based on an applicant’s good faith misunderstandings of the details of copyright.”
Glover’s lawyer Jonathan Davis pushed back, insisting Kidd Wes did much more than make a simple mistake.
“This is not a mere error,” Davis said in court. “This is the absolute failure to register a work.”
He added, “When you are claiming that the complete failure to register the work that you seek to protect — and have standing to sue from — has been omitted, that is a material error.”
Kidd Wes awaits the court’s ruling on his appeal.
