Guns N' Roses Will "Vigorously Contest" Plagiarism Lawsuit

10/07/09 11:52am

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

Guns N' Roses have denied copying parts of two songs by German electronic musician Ulrich Schnauss and using them without permission.

Independiente and Domino Records, which own the rights to the songs in question, sued Guns N' Roses for $1 million U.S. on Friday, claiming the band used samples from the tunes in Chinese Democracy's "Riad N' The Bedouins" without permission to create the track's "ambient noise."

Guns N' Roses manager Irving Azoff issued a statement on Tuesday in which he said the band will "vigorously contest" the claims in the suit.

"The band believed when the record came out and still believes that there are no unauthorized samples on the track," Azoff said.

"The snippets of 'ambient noise' in question were provided by a member of the album's production team who has assured us that these few seconds of sound were obtained legitimately.

"Artists these days can't read the minds of those they collaborate with and therefore are unfortunately vulnerable to claims like this one. While the band resents the implication that they would ever use another artist's work improperly and are assessing possible counterclaims, they are confident this situation will be satisfactorily resolved."

Azoff said Guns N' Roses' lawyers will respond to the lawsuit soon, according to the New York Times.

You can see Guns N' Roses here:

Dec. 11 Taipei, Taiwan @ Taipei County Stadium
Dec. 13 Seoul, South Korea @ Olympic Park Gymnastics Stadium
Dec. 16 Osaka, Japan @ Osaka Dome
Dec. 19 Tokyo, Japan @ Tokyo Dome