Mark Anderson, a professor of philosophy at Belmont University, publishes an account of Nietzsche's life and work. He remembered liking "Friedrich Nietzsche" (Overlook Press, 2005), by the late independent scholar Curtis Cate, so he started rereading that one. But then he had second thoughts. After all, "Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography" (Cambridge University Press, 2010), by Julian Young, was newer, and, what's more, Mr. Young was a philosopher, with a chair at Wake Forest University. To make up his mind, Mr. Anderson ended up reading chapter by chapter in the Young volume, alternating with the corresponding chapters in Cate. That choice would wind up causing Mr. Young and the Cambridge press considerable embarrassment. Reading the more recent book, Mr. Anderson found that Mr. Young had borrowed Cate's words without acknowledgment. Mr. Young responded very briefly at first, saying he was "grateful" to Mr. Anderson for pointing out those lapses. But the dispute recently re-erupted after Mr. Young, in part at Cambridge's prompting, responded a second time, in a piece posted online and scheduled for publication this fall. His response and the episode in general raise provocative questions about how thoroughly university presses can or should vet their books before publication--and, more broadly, what counts as intellectual property in a life story.