Ed Sheeran goes to court over yet another copyright lawsuit against his 2013 single “Thinking Out Loud.”
The lawsuit was filed in 2018 by Structured Asset Sales, who own a copyright interest to Ed Townsend (co-writer of the song) and allege that Ed’s song was copied from Marvin Gaye’s 1973 song “Let’s Get It On.”
The judge overseeing the case, Judge Louis A. Stanton, has ruled that the case should be decided by a jury because “the statute does not support Sheeran’s contention that the LGO chord progression and harmonic rhythm combination is not original enough to to copyright them.”
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“There is no clear rule that the combination of two non-protectable elements is not numerous enough to form an original work.”
A previous case was brought up in 2016 by Ed Townsend’s family, who also claimed that Ed Sheeran’s song was too similar. This case is still pending.
But this isn’t the first lawsuit Ed Sheeran has dealt with. Apparently, Ed was also sued in 2016 for plagiarism for his song “Photograph” by songwriters Martin Harrington and Tom Leonard.
He was also sued (yes, again) in 2018 over his song “Shape Of You” by Sami Switch, who claimed Ed copied his 2015 song “Oh Why.”
Ed eventually won the case and was awarded $1.1 million to cover his legal fees.
After his win, he said: “While we’re obviously happy with the outcome, I feel that claims like this are far too common now and have become a culture where a claim is made with the idea that an agreement will be reached.” is cheaper than accepting it in court.”
“Even if there is no basis for the claim. It’s really detrimental to the songwriting industry. In popular music, only so many notes and very few chords are used. If 60,000 songs are released on Spotify every day, coincidence must happen.”
The trial date is yet to be set, but we’ll see how this latest suit fares in front of a jury.
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