The copyright infringement lawsuit claims that the 2015 song from the 2018 hit single "Dance with a Stranger" was stolen from the 2015 song of the same name, and the U.S. Court of Appeals resumed for the Ninth Circuit. In 2023, a California federal judge dismissed the case, saying “most of the similarities claimed by most plaintiffs depend on blocks of music buildings that belong to the public domain and cannot be protected by law. The federal court of appeals reversed the ruling, saying that a “reasonable jury” should decide the matter.

The case will return to Judge Wesley L. Hsu, who decided to dismiss the lawsuit filed in 2022 by songwriters Jordan Vincent, Christopher Miranda and Rosco Banlaoi, under the title Sound and Color, LLC. The writer claims that “Dancing with Strangers” is basically similar to the title, chorus and work of its original and protected songs. The appeal will focus specifically on the hook of the song. According to the filing, “HSU previously believed that “sound and color cannot meet the external test of the law and therefore approved the summary judgment. ”The appeal supports the view that external testing is not the only way to evaluate similarity between songs.

It continues, “But here, sound and color argue for the theory of infringement choice and arrangement.” “Under that theory, copyright protection is extended to 'a combination of unprotectable elements . . . only if those elements are numerous enough and their selection and arrangement original enough that their combination institutions an original work of authorship’ … Because a selection-and-arrangement theory is an alternative to filtering used to assess works that cannot as easily 'be distributed into protected and unprotected elements,' our analysis does not filter out the musical elements that would be individually unprotected."

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In September 2022, Smith and Normani's lawyers asked the judge to reject most copyright infringement lawsuits filed by voice and color. Their previous motions refuted other songs with similar titles, including Cyndi Lauper's 1989 "Dancing with Strangers" and "Risk Dancing with Strangers" 2019. As the appeal became more focused on the hook, the lawsuit entered a more controversial territory.

In 2023, Ed Sheeran won a copyright infringement lawsuit claiming he removed his hit song "Thinking" from Marvin Gaye's "Let's Go on." Last year, he won the appeal. A group of judges in the Court of Appeals wrote at the time: “Over-protection of this fundamental element would have the potential to kill creativity and undermine the purpose of copyright law.”