Ed Sheeran Triumphs in New York Plagiarism Case

MUSIC – The jury in the Manhattan federal court concluded that the 2014 hit, Thinking Out Loud, did not constitute a partial copy of Marvin Gaye’s famous Let’s Get It On from 1973. Ed Sheeran expressed his happiness with the victory against an “unfounded” complaint, but also his frustration that such a question of musical copyright “could be brought before the courts”.

British artist Ed Sheeran has been declared innocent of plagiarism in a lawsuit against the descendants of Marvin Gaye. This image was generated by an artificial intelligence for illustration purposes. © Amelie2504 / Midjourney

Culture

Published on May 05, 2023 – 11:38 GMT +02:00

Second Legal Victory in a Year

This marks Ed Sheeran’s second legal victory in a year: in April 2022, he also won a separate lawsuit in the High Court of London, which dismissed accusations from two musicians claiming he plagiarized one of their works for his global hit Shape Of You.

In New York, the British singer-songwriter was even forced to play guitar and sing in front of the court as a sign of good faith. The song reached second place on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Song.

Potential Increase in Copyright Disputes

According to experts, the Sheeran trial could lead to a rise in copyright disputes and a kind of “paranoia” among musicians, who fear copying each other. “The world I want to live in is a world where no one sues anyone for melodic or harmonic similarities because they can easily occur by mere coincidence,” Joe Bennett, a musicologist at the Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts, told AFP. “It should not be protected by copyright,” he added.

The repertoire of Motown king Marvin Gaye had already been at the center of a complaint when his family – who was not involved in the Sheeran trial – won against artists Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams for similarities between the songs Blurred Lines and Got To Give It Up. This decision surprised the music industry and legal experts, who believe that many melodic and harmonic elements belong to the public domain.

# Tags: Music