Sam Smith and Normani have requested a federal choose to throw out a copyright lawsuit that accuses their 2019 single Dancing With a Stranger of copying an earlier observe with an nearly equivalent identify.
It’s the second time Smith and the opposite co-defendants have tried to close the case down earlier than trial.
Attorneys for Smith, Normani, their co-writers and a bunch of firms that features UMG Recordings, Sony Music Publishing and Downtown Music Publishing are searching for abstract judgment, a ruling that might eliminate the declare and not using a trial.
Their request is ready out in a joint temporary filed on Tuesday (July 7) that additionally incorporates the plaintiff’s opposition. You may learn the temporary in full right here.
The 2022 lawsuit was introduced by Sound and Shade, LLC, an organization owned by songwriter Jordan Vincent and the manufacturing duo SKX.
It claims Dancing With a Stranger lifted its hook from Dancing With Strangers, a track Vincent co-wrote in 2015.
A California federal choose dismissed the case in 2023, however the Ninth Circuit Court docket of Appeals revived it final 12 months, ruling {that a} jury ought to determine whether or not the 2 hooks are considerably comparable.
That despatched the dispute right into a second section of discovery centered on whether or not Smith and their collaborators had truly copied Vincent.
Throughout that course of, Sound and Shade dropped its claims that the songwriters had entry to Dancing With Strangers — together with an allegation that the observe had been streamed greater than 500,000 instances earlier than Smith’s track was written in 2018, performs the defendants say discovery confirmed had been bot-generated.
That leaves Sound and Shade counting on a single principle often called putting similarity, which the defendants describe as a far more durable commonplace to satisfy.
“Plaintiff makes a last-ditch try to lift an inference of copying via the exacting doctrine of putting similarity,” legal professionals from Davis Wright Tremaine wrote on behalf of the defendants.
Putting similarity requires Sound and Shade to point out it’s “nearly not possible” the overlap arose by something aside from copying — a bar the temporary says the plaintiff “doesn’t come near assembly.”
Attorneys for Smith and Normani say the resemblance comes all the way down to a four-word phrase and a few unprotected musical constructing blocks.
“The similarities quantity to a four-word phrase, ‘dancing with a stranger’ — which has appeared in additional than fifteen songs earlier than Plaintiff’s track — and a few unprotected pitches and rhythms in every track’s in any other case totally different melodies to which that phrase is sung,” Smith and Normani‘s legal professionals wrote. “These similarities usually are not distinctive or so advanced as to render coincidence nearly not possible.”
The temporary factors to prior songs utilizing the phrase, together with one recorded by Cyndi Lauper, and says the plaintiff’s personal professional conceded that not one of the copied parts are distinctive to Dancing With Strangers.
The temporary raises a second, impartial argument for dismissing Sound and Shade‘s declare.
It says Dancing With Strangers itself incorporates two unlicensed samples — The Ha Dance by Masters at Work and Assume (About It) by Lyn Collins — that run via the choruses containing the disputed hook.
“Discovery on this section has additionally revealed one other impartial, deadly defect in Plaintiff’s declare,” the Davis Wright Tremaine legal professionals wrote.
As a result of the samples weren’t licensed, they argue, Sound and Shade can’t declare copyright safety over the sections of the track constructed on them.
“In actual fact, the allegedly copied ‘hook’ by no means happens as soon as in Plaintiff’s track with out being accompanied by each unauthorized samples,” Smith‘s legal professionals wrote.
Sound and Shade, represented by AJ Fluehr of Francis Alexander LLC, argues in the identical temporary that the case belongs in entrance of a jury.
Sound and Shade says its consultants have proven the 2 hooks are “nearly equivalent” as soon as the melodies are in contrast correctly, sharing the identical lyrics, a near-identical melodic contour and nearly the identical rhythm.
“It’s not an accident that this uncommon little bit of expression seems in each songs in nearly equivalent aesthetic contexts for the primary time in historical past a pair months aside; it’s a fingerprint linking them,” the Sound and Shade temporary states.
Fluehr calls the sampling argument “frivolous,” saying the vocal melody and lyrics on the coronary heart of the declare had been written by Vincent and don’t have anything to do with the background manufacturing.
The plaintiff additionally factors to Smith‘s previous, noting that their 2014 track Keep With Me drew comparisons to Tom Petty‘s I Gained’t Again Down and led to a settlement that added Petty as a author.
Requested at a deposition how Petty‘s track had ended up in their very own, Smith replied that there have been “solely so many notes on a piano,” in response to the temporary.
Sound and Shade argues that rationalization undercuts the declare of impartial creation, and notes that even one of many defendants’ personal consultants rejected the reasoning.
“The notion that there’s solely 88 notes on a keyboard is a nugatory instance that issues are going to duplicate,” musicologist Ronald Sadoff testified, in response to the temporary.
The defendants dismiss the Petty comparability as “outlandish” and say a settled declare from greater than a decade in the past just isn’t proof of copying.
The dispute is considered one of a number of striking-similarity instances now earlier than US federal courts.
On the identical day the Smith temporary was filed, NewJeans, their label ADOR and mother or father firm HYBE had been sued in the identical California courtroom over claims that their 2023 observe ETA copied a mix of parts from an older dance observe.
The revival of the Dancing With a Stranger case additionally cuts in opposition to a run of courtroom wins for defendants, amongst them Ed Sheeran, whose copyright battle over Considering Out Loud ended when the US Supreme Court docket declined to revive the declare in opposition to him in 2025.
Decide Wesley L. Hsu is because of hear the movement on August 14 in Los Angeles, the place he’ll determine whether or not to finish the case or ship it to trial.Music Enterprise Worldwide
