Singer Ed Sheeran won his lawsuit after being accused of plagiarizing Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On in his two-time Grammy-winning song Thinking Out Loud.
After ten sessions in a federal court in Manhattan (New York), the jury came to a unanimous verdict after three hours of deliberation that "the musician did not infringe copyright."
The complaint was filed in 2017 by the heirs of Ed Townsend, co-author of Gaye's song. They accused Sheeran and Amy Wadge, his friend and co-writer, of creating a beat and "an ascending four-chord sequence" with "striking similarities" to Gaye's 1973 song Let's Get It On.
"I won't have to retire"
Speaking to the media outside the courthouse, Sheeran expressed his happiness at the outcome of the ruling, claiming "it looks like I won't have to retire from my day job after all." Sheeran had stated, during the trial, that if found guilty he would retire from music:
Obviously, I am very happy with the outcome of the case (...) I feel that the truth was heard and the truth was believed. It's good that we can both move on with our lives now, it's sad that it has to come to this.
The artist also acknowledged feeling "absolutely frustrated that unfounded claims (...) can go to court" and reflected on "the creative freedom of composers":
If the jury had decided this matter differently, we would also have to say goodbye to the creative freedom of composers (...) Artists should be able to create original music without worrying every step of the way that such creativity will be wrongly questioned.
“I am obviously very happy with the outcome of the case,” Ed Sheeran said in a statement that he read outside a Manhattan courthouse. A jury found the pop singer did not copy Marvin Gaye’s classic “Let’s Get It On” for his hit “Thinking Out Loud.” https://t.co/XoS7iRuHfw pic.twitter.com/PLVMnIT0oz
— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 4, 2023
Sheeran also said that because the trial was held in the U.S., he missed his grandmother's funeral: "I missed being with my family during my grandmother's funeral (...) It's a time I'll never get back."
Sheeran's defense and his second trial win
During the trial, Sheeran performed parts of his song Thinking Out Loud with his guitar. He claimed that he wrote the song at home in England with Wudge and said he was inspired by his grandparents and a new romantic relationship he had just begun at the time.
His attorney Ilene Farkas told the jury that the similarities in "chord progressions and rhythms" of the two songs were "the letters of the alphabet of music." She stated that her client was "wrongfully accused" and that "his song was born out of an emotional conversation. It was his original creation:
These are basic musical building blocks that composers now and forever must be free to use, or all of us who love music will be the poorer for it.
Keisha Rice, who represented the Townsend heirs, argued that her clients were not claiming to be the owners of musical elements, but were referring to "the way these elements are uniquely combined."
This is the second trial won by Sheeran. Last year, he won a copyright battle in the High Court in London for his song Shape of You.
