british artist Ed Sheeran Didn’t Plagiarize Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” when composing his worldwide hit “Thinking Out Loud” a jury determined a Manhattan court this Thursday.
Sheeran stood up and hugged his team of lawyers when the jury determined that he had created “regardless” his song, found an AFP reporter inside the courtroom.
The musician said he was “happy” after the jury agreed with himfor considering the prosecution’s demands “unfounded” by copyright.
The civil suit was filed Ed Townsend’s estateco-author of the hit of Gayealleging «striking similarities and evident common elements» between the two songs.
The heirs were looking for a share in the profits that the song generated for Sheeran.
Ed Sheeran used his guitar to show his innocence
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 who writes most of his songs in one day, and assured that he had written «Thinking Out Loud» together with the also composer Amy Wadge, with whom you usually work.
He assured that they wrote his great success “Thinking Out Loud” in his housein February 2014.
“We sat down with our guitars,” Sheeran said, according to the American press. “We write a lot together,” she said.
The judge I had to decide if Sheeran’s song and Gaye’s classic are substantially similar and if the common elements are protected by copyright laws.
Sheeran tried to prove to the jury that the progression of chords 1-3-4-5 in question is a staple of pop music that does not belong to anyone.
His legal team argued that Gaye and Townsend They were not the first to compose either. a song with these chords, and they quoted several songs by Van Morrison that use that sequence and were released before “Let’s Get It On” (1973).
«There are dozens if not hundreds of songs before and after» to the gay song, “that use the same chord progression or a similar one,” they claimed.
Townsend’s family had pointed out that the group Boyz II Men had mixed of the two songs and that Sheeran had also combined them on stage.
The music industry was very aware of this trial since it could have set a precedent pFor the protection of composers’ creations and open 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 in a similar case in London for his song “Shape Of You”.
“Thinking Out Loud” earned Sheeran a Grammy Award for Best Song of the year in 2016.
In recent years there has been a spate of copyright lawsuits of this sort. In 2016, Gaye’s family -that was not part of the lawsuit of New York vs. Sheeran- successfully sued the artists Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and T.I. because of the similarities between the song “Blurred Lines” and “Got to Give it Up” by Gaye.
Sheeran’s has been the last of several high-profile cases about copyright that have the music industry in suspense and that make many composers feel paranoid about their own creative processes and their vulnerability to litigation.