british artist Ed Sheeran did not plagiarize the song Marvin Gaye “Let’s Get It On” from composing his worldwide hit “Thinking Out Loud,” a Manhattan court jury determined Thursday.
Sheeran stood up and hugged his legal team when the jury determined that he had “independently” created his song, an AFP reporter found inside the courtroom.
The musician said he was “happy” after the jury agreed with him, considering the copyright prosecution’s claims “unfounded”.
The civil lawsuit was filed by the heirs of Ed Townsendco-writer of Gaye’s hit, claiming “striking similarities and obvious commonalities” between the two songs.
The estate was seeking a share of the profits the song brought to Sheeran.
Sheeran, 32, played several songs on his guitar from the witness stand to convince the jury that the two compositions were different.
The English singer said that he writes most of his songs in a day, and assured that he had written “Thinking Out Loud” together with fellow songwriter Amy Wadge, with whom he often works.
He claimed they wrote their smash hit “Thinking Out Loud” at his home in February 2014.
“We sat down with our guitars,” Sheeran said, according to the US press. “We write a lot together,” he said.
The jury had to decide whether Sheeran’s song and Gaye’s classic are substantially similar and whether common elements are protected by copyright law.
Sheeran tried to prove to the jury that the 1-3-4-5 chord progression in question is a staple of pop music that belongs to no one.
His legal team argued that Gaye and Townsend were not the first to compose a song with these chords either, citing several songs from Van Morrison which use that sequence and were published before “Let’s Get It On” (1973).
“There are dozens if not hundreds of songs before and after” Gaye’s song “that use the same or a similar chord progression,” they claimed.
Townsend’s family had pointed out that the group Boyz II Men had mixed the two songs, and that Sheeran had also combined them on stage.
The music industry was very aware of this trial as it could have set a precedent for the protection of composers’ creations and opened the door to legal changes in other parts of the world.
This was the second trial in a year for Sheeran. Last April he won a similar case in London for his song “Shape Of You”.
“Thinking Out Loud” earned Sheeran a Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 2016.
In recent years there has been a spate of copyright lawsuits of this type. In 2016, Gaye’s family—not part of the New York lawsuit against Sheeran—successfully sued the artists. Robin Thicke, Pharrell williams and YOU for the similarities between the song “Blurred Lines” and “Got to Give it Up” by Gaye.
Sheeran’s was the latest in a series of high-profile copyright cases that have the music industry on edge and leave many songwriters paranoid about their own creative processes and vulnerability to litigation.
