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Kanye West Sued Over Copyright Infringement
Documents filed in California federal court on Tuesday reveal that Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign are facing a lawsuit from Donna Summer’s estate for allegedly using her 1977 song “I Feel Love” without permission in their new album “Vultures 1.”
Despite allegedly being denied permission by the late singer’s estate, Ye and Ty Dolla $ign proceeded to use Donna Summer’s song “I Feel Love” for their single “Good (Don’t Die),” which was released on Feb. 10.
The estate, via an Instagram Story on the official Donna Summer account, claimed that Ye may have altered the lyrics, had someone re-sing them, or employed AI, but the essence remains the same, constituting copyright infringement.
The Summer estate “not only considered the immense commercial value of the ‘I Feel Love’ composition, but also the potential degradation to Summer’s legacy,” the filing states.
It also claimed that “permission was explicitly denied” when an organization called “Ailen Music” reached out on behalf of West—and that “despite this denial, defendants shamelessly used instantly recognizable portions of Summer’s hit song.”
An attorney for Summer’s estate told The Daily Beast that “we are allowing the complaint to speak for itself at this point” and suggested the case is more than simply “a sampling case.”
“This lawsuit is about more than Defendants’ mere failure to pay the appropriate licensing fee for using another’s musical property. “It is also about the rights of artists to decide how their works are used and presented to the public, and the need to prevent anyone from simply stealing creative works when they cannot secure the right to use them legally. In this case, it is about protecting Donna Summer’s own musical legacy and one of popular music’s most influential and ground-breaking songs.”