Coldplay Face Plagiarism Claims Once Again

With a sense of timing they could set their watches by, Coldplay have found themselves to be on the receiving end of a plagiarism claim once again. This time, a "well talented" yet "unknown" songwriter by the name of Sammie Lee Smith filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court alleging that he wrote the songs 'Yellow', 'Trouble' and 'Clocks.'

According to reports in TMZ.com, Smith claims to have written around 4,000 songs, all contained on approximately 100 tapes with each tape housing about 40 songs. He is insistent that Coldplay cease playing the songs and has demanded an unsubstantiated sum of money by way of compensation.

As previously reported on Spinner, in September 2009 Coldplay reached an out-of-court settlement with hard rock guitarist Joe Satriani. The guitarist had alleged that Coldplay's global hit 'Viva La Vida' bore more than a passing resemblance to his 2004 song, 'If I Could Fly.'

Around the same time, singer-songwriter Andy Gallagher claimed that the video for Coldplay's 'Strawberry Swing' had "striking similarities" to the video of his own 'Something Else' while both indie band Creaky Boards and singer Yusuf Islam (fomerlyCat Stevens) both made plagiarism allegations of their own.

Coldplay have yet to respond to the new lawsuit.