In recent years, there has been a rash of lawsuits filed over music is writers, claiming other musicians have stolen their songs. British singer Ed Sheeran has been embroiled in at least three such cases.
On Thursday May for a jury and New York, ruled that Sheeran did not in any way, copy the song “Let’s Get it On” when he wrote “Thinking Out Loud”.
During the two week trial, Sheeran repeatedly picked up his guitar to demonstrate what he was explaining in relation to creating and mashing up songs in a concert.
While passages and lyrics are protected under U.S. copyright laws, chord progressions are not. There are just 12 notes in a chromatic scale, which means there is a finite number of cords and notes that can be used when composing a song. At some point, there will be similarities in notes and chords between musical compositions.
Saying she had to protect her father’s legacy, Kathryn Townsend Griffin filed a suit on behalf of her father, Ed Townsend, who cowrote ”Let’s Get it On” with Marvin Gaye. Griffin said that Sheeran’s composition had too many similarities to her father’s music and thus violated the copyright protection laws.
After the verdict was read, Sheeran briefly put his head in his hands before rising and mouthing a thank you to the jury. He spoke with Griffin for about 10 minutes before leaving the courtroom.
Reading from a prepared statement, Sheeran said, “I am obviously very happy with the outcome of this case, and it looks like I’m not going to have to retire from my day job, after all. But at the same time, I am unbelievably frustrated that baseless claims like this are allowed to go to court at all.” Sheeran Threatened to retire from music, if he had been found guilty of copyright infringement.
Sheeran Missed his grandmothers funeral in Ireland as a result of the trial saying, “I won’t get that time back.”