According to the federal lawsuit filed in New York, Christina Aguilera's song, contains samples from the track Hippy, Skippy Moon Strut by Dave Cortez and the Moon People. In 2004, TufAmerica purchased exclusive rights to this song.

However, Sony Music made a deal with Codigo Music and the Clyde Otis Music Group to use the song.

Now TufAmerica wants the other publishers’ claims asking the court to declare them as its rightful owner. They are also seeking for unspecified damages.

As happens more often, it is far from clear who owns what because the song titles, writing credits and artist credits have shape-shifted over the years.

It all started with The Latin Blues Band, a local group consisting of working musicians in the Latin clubs of the greater New York area featuring vibraphonist/pianist Louie Ramirez.

The Latin Blues Band featuring Luis Avilés, released their debut album 'Take A Trip Pussycat' on the Speed label. backed by some of the finest session players in the New York scene - most notably, Bernard Purdie on drums.

The album contained a track called (I'll Be A) Happy Man. The song featured funky breakbeat drums on the verses, switching off to strict Latin percussion on the chorus and was a hit in New York. Listen to it here:

The Speed label was very keen on recycling. So it wouldn't take long before (I'll Be A) Happy Man was reissued. This time the song had no vocals and was now titled The Happy Soul. It featured Papi Cadairec on drums and percussion. Also, The Latin Soul Band had renamed themselves as Los Astronautas - or, for the English speakers, The Moon People.

When the song re-appeared in 1968 it dit not become a hit. Not wishing to give up on a good thing, the folks at Speed took The Happy Soul, edited in new sections. Dave "Baby" Cortez also overdubbed the organ solos and the song was released again.

Retitled Happy Soul (With A Hook) and now credited to Dave Cortez with The Moon People, the single was released for the third in late 1968.

A few months later, in 1969, yet another re-edit of this track, this time titled Hippy, Skippy, Moon Strut (Opus #1) and credited simply to The Moon People, was released on another label called Roulette. You can listen to this version here:

Shifting credits
The original (I'll Be A) Happy Man was credited solely to Bobby Marin. The Happy Soul, saw producer Morty Craft added to the writing credits. With the third version, Happy Soul (With A Hook), the writing credit was assigned to Cortez and the otherwise-unknown E. Jackobeck. And the Hippy, Skippy, Moon Strut version, was suddenly credited to Harold Beatty, best-known as writer for the Supremes and The Jackson 5 among others.

These are a lot of different composers, musicians and labels for what is essentially the same song. So you can't really blame Sony to paying the wrong distributor for the sample rights. That is to say, if TufAmerica is indeed the right part holding the rights - now for the court to decide.