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Sam Smith and Normani copyright case goes to trial

A copyright lawsuit over the 2019 dance hit Dancing With A Stranger by Sam Smith and Normani is going to trial.

A federal judge in Los Angeles turned down the pair's latest attempt to have the case dismissed. The suit claims they took the hook of their multi-platinum track from a 2015 song called Dancing With Strangers.

In the ruling, US District Judge Wesley L Hsu wrote that the plaintiffs had raised enough of a question about striking similarity and independent creation to rule out a finding of no infringement at the summary judgment stage.

The lawsuit has been running for four years. It was dismissed a year after it was filed, then brought back on appeal. In July, lawyers for Smith and Normani asked the court to dismiss it once more, saying that experts for the plaintiff songwriters Jordan Vincent, Christopher Miranda and Rosco Banlao had not demonstrated the necessary striking similarity.

The judge was not persuaded, and held that the defendants' argument that they wrote their 2019 song on their own, with no access to the plaintiffs' track, carried no weight at this point in the proceedings.

Three songwriters are behind the case, which alleges that Sam Smith and other defendants took Dancing With A Stranger from Sound and Colour, the songwriting and production company behind Vincent's 2015 song.

Their lawyer said they were looking forward to their day in court.

Photo: Cover Media
Source: Muzland
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