Rammstein Hit with Plagarism Lawsuit in Paris Over “Deutschland”
Neue Deutsche Härte titans Rammstein are facing a lawsuit in a Parisian court that claims the iconic band plagiarized French synthwave band Ninja Cyborg with their 2019 track “Deutschland”.
Filed in the the Intellectual Property Chamber of the Paris Judicial Court by Ninja Cyborg with the support of their publisher Music Unit, the lawsuit claims that the similarities between the aforementioned Rammstein track and their 2018 track “Sunny Road” were “indeed the result of voluntary borrowing.”
According to a press release from Ninja Cyborg’s legal team, the issue originally came to light when Rammstein fans in 2020 claimed the French band’s song was a rip off of “Deutschland” despite the fact that the original song came out several months beforehand.
Officials said that three years later, the issue was brought before the Paris Court of Appeal, where a musical expert was appointed to the case. Following their investigation, the expert determined that Rammstein “deliberately borrowed the riff and other melodic elements of ‘Sunny Road’, in ‘Deutschland’ and that ‘no mere coincidence’ is possible, given the ‘too many similarities’” between the two songs.
Ultimately, according to Ninja Cyborg’s legal team, the expert determined that Rammstein “without a doubt” ripped off their song.
Having been initially accused of plagiarizing Rammstein, it seems the tables have now turned on the German band, as the first hearing in this plagiarism case is set for September 10, 2024.
As you can hear in the two clips below, the opening synth run in “Deutschland” could be considered pretty similar to the one in “Sunny Road.” However this will go down will ultimately be determined through the courts, but we’ll keep an eye on this as it develops.
