As a result of allegations that he plagiarized Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get. For his smash hit Thinking Out Loud Ed Sheeran has been ordered to stand trial in the United States. The judge rejected Sheeran’s request to throw out the case ruling that a jury should decide whether the two songs are similar.
This decision was made six months after a London trial in which Sheeran was found not guilty of copying his hit song Shape Of You. After that decision, the singer lashed out at what he called “baseless” copyright claims. In 2018, investment banker David Pullman and a company called Structured Asset Sales, which had acquired a portion of the estate of Let’s Get It On co-writer Ed Townsend filed a claim over Thinking Out Loud, not Gaye’s family.
What Is The Reason For Ed Sheeran’s Lawsuit?
They claim that Sheeran and his co-writer Amy Wadge “copied and exploited without authorization or credit” the Gaye song, “including but not limited to the melody, rhythms, harmonies, drums, bass line, backing chorus, tempo, syncopation and looping,” and they are seeking $100m (£90m) in damages.
On Thursday, US District Judge Louis Stanton ordered the civil trial due to a disagreement between the party’s musical experts. Sheeran will be displeased if a trial by jury is required. Many attorneys who defend authors’ rights have argued that juries lack the sophistication to assess whether or not a similarity between two songs constitutes plagiarism.
Although Judge Stanton agreed with Sheeran that ticket sales were unrelated to the alleged infringement, he ruled that the jury must decide if SAS can include concert revenue in damages. According to Pollstar, a publication specializing in the music business, Sheeran’s 2014–2015 tour grossed $150 million (£135 million).
There was silence from his legal team after the judge’s decision. Structured Asset Sales’ attorney, Hillel Parness, expressed satisfaction with the decision to Reuters. Sheeran has already faced one trial related to Thinking Out Loud which peaked at No. 1 in the UK in 2014 and won the Grammy for Best Song of 2016. A second case that SAS has filed has been put on hold while a trial proceeds in a third case brought by a different part of Townsend’s estate.
“Coincidence Is A Certainty”
It was alleged during the March trial for the song Shape of You that the singer and his co-writers, John McDaid and Steven McCutcheon, stole the hook from Oh Why a song released in 2015 by Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue.
The star and his co-defendants were awarded £900,000 in costs, however, after a High Court judge ruled that they had “neither deliberately nor subconsciously” plagiarized the earlier song. Later, Sheeran made the following statement on Instagram: “In the future, I’m hoping this ruling will help prevent such frivolous lawsuits. It’s time for this to finally end.”
Then he elaborated: “The music publishing business takes a serious hit from this. Pop music uses a limited range of notes and a small number of chords. When sixty thousand new songs are added to Spotify every single day, coincidences are inevitable. That’s 22,000,000 songs written every year using only 12 notes.”
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