Decision made in huge Ed Sheeran trial

The British singer had threatened to quit music if he lost the legal battle. At times he played songs in the courtroom.On Thursday, a court in New York ruled Sheeran did not plagiarise Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On when composing his 2014 hit Thinking Out Loud. It took the jury of three men and four women three hours to reach a decision.Sheeran stood up and hugged his team after jurors ruled that he “independently” created his song, according to an AFP reporter inside the Manhattan federal courtroom.He beamed to supporters and the press as he left the Manhattan court.The lawsuit was filed by heirs of Gaye co-writer Ed Townsend, who alleged that harmonic progressions and rhythmical elements of Sheeran’s song were lifted from the classic made famous by Gaye without permission.The heirs sought a share of the profits from Sheeran’s song. The musician, 32, testified that he writes most of his songs in a day, and noted that he co-wrote Thinking Out Loud with singer-songwriter Amy Wadge, a regular partner.The two wrote the hit at Sheeran’s home in February 2014, he said.“We sat guitar to guitar,” Sheeran said, according to US media. “We wrote together quite a lot.” The jurors were tasking with deciding if Sheeran’s song and Gaye’s classic were substantially similar and if their common elements were protected by copyright law.Mr Townsend’s family had pointed out that the group Boyz II Men has performed mash-ups of the two songs, and that Sheeran had blended the songs together on stage as well.Sheeran’s team contested the allegations, saying “there are dozens if not hundreds of songs that predate and postdate” Gaye’s song, “using the same or similar chord progression.”A musicologist retained by the defence said in court documents that the four-chord sequence was used in a number of songs before Gaye’s hit came out in 1973.Industry members closely followed the copyright lawsuit as it could have set precedent for protections on songwriters’ creations and open the door to legal challenges elsewhere.It was the second trial in a year for Sheeran, who successfully testified at a London court last April in a case centred around his song Shape Of You saying that lawsuit was emblematic of copyright litigation going too far. The judge ruled in his favour.Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud shot up America’s Billboard Hot 100 charts when it was released, and won Sheeran a Song of the Year prize at the Grammys in 2016.There have been a flood of such copyright trials in recent years, notably in 2016 when Gaye’s family – who is not part of the New York lawsuit against Sheeran – successfully sued the artists Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams, and T.I. over similarities between the song Blurred Lines and Gaye’s Got to Give it Up.

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May 05, 2023 at 12:03AM
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The British singer had threatened to quit music if he lost the legal battle. At times he played songs in the courtroom.On Thursday, a court in New York ruled Sheeran did not plagiarise Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On when composing his 2014 hit Thinking Out Loud. It took the jury of three men and four women three hours to reach a decision.Sheeran stood up and hugged his team after jurors ruled that he “independently” created his song, according to an AFP reporter inside the Manhattan federal courtroom.He beamed to supporters and the press as he left the Manhattan court.The lawsuit was filed by heirs of Gaye co-writer Ed Townsend, who alleged that harmonic progressions and rhythmical elements of Sheeran’s song were lifted from the classic made famous by Gaye without permission.The heirs sought a share of the profits from Sheeran’s song. The musician, 32, testified that he writes most of his songs in a day, and noted that he co-wrote Thinking Out Loud with singer-songwriter Amy Wadge, a regular partner.The two wrote the hit at Sheeran’s home in February 2014, he said.“We sat guitar to guitar,” Sheeran said, according to US media. “We wrote together quite a lot.” The jurors were tasking with deciding if Sheeran’s song and Gaye’s classic were substantially similar and if their common elements were protected by copyright law.Mr Townsend’s family had pointed out that the group Boyz II Men has performed mash-ups of the two songs, and that Sheeran had blended the songs together on stage as well.Sheeran’s team contested the allegations, saying “there are dozens if not hundreds of songs that predate and postdate” Gaye’s song, “using the same or similar chord progression.”A musicologist retained by the defence said in court documents that the four-chord sequence was used in a number of songs before Gaye’s hit came out in 1973.Industry members closely followed the copyright lawsuit as it could have set precedent for protections on songwriters’ creations and open the door to legal challenges elsewhere.It was the second trial in a year for Sheeran, who successfully testified at a London court last April in a case centred around his song Shape Of You saying that lawsuit was emblematic of copyright litigation going too far. The judge ruled in his favour.Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud shot up America’s Billboard Hot 100 charts when it was released, and won Sheeran a Song of the Year prize at the Grammys in 2016.There have been a flood of such copyright trials in recent years, notably in 2016 when Gaye’s family – who is not part of the New York lawsuit against Sheeran – successfully sued the artists Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams, and T.I. over similarities between the song Blurred Lines and Gaye’s Got to Give it Up.