Ed Sheeran is heading to court over another copyright lawsuit against his 2014 single “Thinking Out Loud.”
The lawsuit was filed in 2018 by Structured Asset Sales, who own stake in Ed Townsend's (co-writer of the song) copyrights, and claims that Ed's song copied from Marvin Gaye's 1973 song "Let's Get It On."
The judge overseeing the case, Judge Louis Stanton, has ruled that it's to be settled by a jury trial because, "The law does not support Sheeran's contention that the combination of LGO's chord progression and harmonic rhythm is insufficiently original to warrant it copyrightable."
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"There is no bright-line rule that the combination of two unprotectable elements is insufficiently numerous to constitute an original work."
A previous case was brought forth in 2016 by the family of Ed Townsend, who also claimed that Ed Sheeran’s song was too similar. That case is still pending.
But this isn't the first lawsuit Ed Sheeran has dealt with. Apparently, Ed was also sued for plagiarism in 2016 for his song "Photograph" by songwriters Martin Harrington and Tom Leonard.
They claimed it was too similar to the song "Amazing" that they wrote for Matt Cardle, a winner of The X Factor, and sued Ed for $20 million.
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He was also sued (yes, again) in 2018 for his song "Shape of You" by Sami Switch, who claimed Ed copied off of his 2015 song "Oh Why."
He alleged that Ed, along with co-writers Steve McCutcheon and Johnny McDaid, copied "particular lines and phrases" from "Oh Why."
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Ed ended up winning the case and was awarded $1.1 million to cover his legal fees.
Following his win, he said, "While we’re obviously happy with the result, I feel like claims like this are way too common now and have become a culture where a claim is made with the idea that a settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court.”
"Even if there’s no base for the claim. It’s really damaging to the songwriting industry. There’s only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music. Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released every day on Spotify."
