Ed Sheeran wins major civil trial for copyright infringement in New York

“Very happy”, the king of British pop Ed Sheeran won his civil trial on Thursday May 4 in New Yorkwhere he was prosecuted for plagiarizing a song by the American prince of soul Marvin Gaye, an emblematic case of the protection of musical copyrights.

The consequences of this lawsuit are important for the music industry, note analysts: Sheeran’s victory should “discourage” other plagiarism complaints, while a defeat would have “chilled” musicians in their creation, for fear of to be accused of copying themselves.

The Manhattan federal court jury ruled that the 32-year-old internationally successful singer-songwriter created his song “independently”. And that his 2014 global hit “Thinking Out Loud” was not a partial copy of Marvin Gaye’s famous “Let’s Get It On” in 1973.

“A guy with a guitar”

Ed Sheeran, who attended the hearings since April 24 defending himself from any plagiarism, thanked the jury and gave the hug to his team, according to an AFP journalist in the courtroom.

On leaving the courthouse, he said he was “very happy” to have dismissed an “unfounded” complaint but also “incredibly frustrated” to have been “accused of theft” and that such a case on the “freedom of creation” and copyright “can go to court”. “I’m just a guitar guy who likes to write songs to please people,” assured the star currently on tour in the United States.

The plaintiffs were heirs of Ed Townsend, an American musician and producer who co-wrote the track “Let’s Get It On” with Marvin Gaye, an African-American soul legend (1939-1984). Townsend’s daughter, Kathryn Townsend Griffin, left the courthouse smoking a cigarillo and saying, “God is good all the time and all the time God is good.”

Second win in a year

This is the second trial won in a year by Ed Sheeran: he had won a separate legal battle in April 2022 before the High Court in London, which had dismissed two musicians accusing him of having copied one of their works for his mega hit “Shape Of You”.

In New York, the British artist even had to play the guitar and sing in court as a pledge of good faith. Because a musicologist, quoted by the accusation, had affirmed that the progression of chords on the two pieces of Sheeran and Gaye was almost identical. However, Sheeran argued on Thursday, these chords are “the alphabet, the composers’ toolbox (…) no one owns them (…) Just like no one owns the color blue”.

The Brit also said he wrote his hit with his musical partner Amy Wadge while “getting out of the shower” at home. The track rose to second on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Grammy Award for Best Song in 2016.

“Paranoia” and “common sense”

Experts feared that a defeat by Sheeran would trigger a proliferation of copyright disputes and a form of “paranoia” among musicians terrified of copying each other.

With this victory on the contrary, Joe Bennett, musicologist at Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts, said he was “delighted” that “common sense prevailed” because “melodic or harmonic similarities can easily arise by pure coincidence”. He thinks it will “discourage further spurious complaints”.

Joseph Fishman, professor of intellectual property law at Vanderbilt University, also feared that a decision against Sheeran would set a precedent: “It can chill songwriters in their way of writing,” he told the newspaper. AFP. Thanks to this verdict in favor of the star, he hopes that “composers and producers will be relieved and will not look too much above their shoulders” to spy on each other.

The work of Motown label king Marvin Gaye had previously been the subject of a lawsuit when his family – who were not a party to the Sheeran lawsuit – won against artists Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over similarities between the songs “Blurred Lines” and “Got To Give It Up”.

In 1976, Briton George Harrison was found responsible for “unknowingly” plagiarizing Chiffons’ “He’s so Fine” for his solo track “My Sweet Lord”. The Beatles alum wrote in his memoir that he later suffered from “songwriting paranoia.”

On the other hand, in the “Stairway to Heaven” case, the famous British hard rock band Led Zeppelin had triumphed against a Californian formation, the American justice having ruled in 2020 that the mythical title of 1971 was not a plagiarism.

With AFP