Ed Sheeran wins copyright case: ‘Thinking Out Loud’ did not infringe on copyright

Ed Sheeran is celebrating today. A jury has found that his 2014 song, ‘Thinking Out Loud’, did not infringe copyright on Marvin Gaye’s 1973 hit ‘Let’s Get It On’.

The jury found that Sheeran did not blatantly copy the chord progressions from the 1973 song, and that ‘Thinking Out Loud’ is entirely his own creation.

Ed Sheeran is happy with the outcome

“I’m obviously very happy with the outcome of the case, and it looks like I’m not having to retire from my day job after all,” Sheeran said to reporters outside the Manhattan courthouse on Thursday.

“But at the same time I’m unbelievably frustrated that baseless claims like this are allowed to go to court at all.

“We’ve spent the last eight years talking about two songs with dramatically different lyrics, melodies, and four chords which are also different and used by songwriters every day all over the world.

“These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before ‘Let’s Get It On’ was written and will be used to create music long after we are all gone.

“They are in a songwriter’s alphabet, our toolkit, and should be there for all of us to use. No one owns them or the way that they’re played in the same way that no one owns the color blue.”

Sheeran calls out the attempt to manipulate the jury

Sheeran went on to say that the musicologist in the trial, Dr. Alexander Stewart, deliberately played different segments and different pitches of his song in order to manipulate the jury to believe that the two songs were the same.

He’s grateful, however, that the “jury saw through those attempts”.

Sheeran also feels that trials like his keep legitimate copyright claims from going forward to trial, and that had the jury found his song liable for copyright infringement, it would have affected the creative freedom of songwriters.

“I’m just a guy with a guitar who loves writing music for people to enjoy. I am not and will never allow myself to be a piggy bank for anyone to shake,” Sheeran said at the end of his statement.

Times Sheeran has been sued for copyright infringement

In 2016, Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard accused Sheeran of copying the same notes as their song ‘Amazing’ performed by Matt Cardle in Sheeran’s song ‘Photograph’. The lawsuit was settled out of court.

Last year, another plagiarism trial for the song ‘Shape of You’ came about when songwriter Sami Chokri claimed Sheeran had copied Chokri’s 2015 song ‘Oh Why’.

After an 11-day hearing, the judge dismissed Chokri’s claim, saying that Sheeran had “neither deliberately nor subconsciously” copied the song.