Ed Sheeran copyright trial: Why has the British singer-songwriter been sued?

What is the case against Sheeran?

In the current copyright infringement case against Sheeran, the pop singer is being accused of copying his 2014 award-winning track from that of the late icon Marvin Gaye’s 1973 soul classic, “Let’s Get it On”. According to The New York Times, the lawsuit has been filed by Kathryn Townsend Griffin, whose late father, Ed Townsend, co-wrote the song “Let’s Get it On”. It alleges that Sheeran lifted the underlying musical composition of Gaye’s song, which refers to the musical building blocks of the song, even if not the specific lyrics or feel.

As of now, the jury is supposed to evaluate whether Sheeran copied Gaye’s song’s building blocks, which are documented on the sheet music on a file with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, according to the Associated Press. Thus, it is being argued that the presence of “overt common elements” between the two songs is a violation of copyright. Copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship such as photographs, musical compositions, sound recordings, computer programs, books, poems, movies, architectural works, and more, as soon as they take on a tangible form of expression.

Although the lawsuit was originally filed in 2017, it has finally now made it to a stage of trial that is expected to last up to two weeks in the Manhattan federal courtroom of 95-year-old Judge Louis L. Stanton, the AP has reported.

The plaintiffs also presented Alexander Stewart, a musicologist, as an expert witness who submitted before the court that in the opening of “Thinking Out Loud,” one of the four chords that Sheeran played was similar to the minor one that appears in the same position of the chord progression throughout “Let’s Get It On.”

During the trial, the lawyers for the plaintiffs also played a video from one of Sheeran’s live shows where he was seen transitioning back and forth between his song and Gaye’s, in a medley-like style.

What is Sheeran arguing?

Responding to the mashup or medley video played by the plaintiffs, Sheeran said, “If I had done what you’re accusing me of doing, I’d be quite an idiot to stand on a stage in front of 20,000 people and do that.” He also testified that he often performs such medleys in courts, which he said were made possible “by the limited harmonic palette of mainstream pop music.”

Arguing that most pop songs can “fit over most pop songs,” Sheeran explained how one could easily go from ‘Let It Be’, by the Beatles, to Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’ and seamlessly switch back and forth between the two. To illustrate this further, his lawyers played a video by an Australian musical comedy group, the Axis of Awesome, where its members run through snippets of songs by Elton John, Lady Gaga, and Beyoncé among others, all using the same four chords. As part of his testimony, Sheeran also used his guitar to show how the major chord he played in his song differed from the minor one suggested by the plaintiff’s musicologist.

Additionally, Sheeran testified that one February evening in 2014, he, along with his collaborator Amy Wadge, in a quick songwriting session, wrote the song “Thinking Out Loud” based on their personal experiences. While Sheeran’s record label Atlantic Records and Sony/ATV Music Publishing are also named as defendants in the lawsuit, his co-writer Amy Wadge’s name remains absent from the list.

Sheeran’s lawyers have argued that the song’s structural symmetry points to the foundations of popular music.“The two songs share versions of a similar and unprotectable chord progression that was freely available to all songwriters,” the defense has argued in a court filing. Adding that chords are the generic building blocks and fair game for any musician, Sheeran’s lawyers submitted a guitar textbook as evidence to show that a standard progression can be used by any musician to write a song. On the other hand, the plaintiffs have argued that even if the chords are publicly available, the “specific way they were used” in Gaye’s song is original in its “selection and arrangement”, for it to be protected by the copyright

However, this is not the first time Sheeran is facing a copyright lawsuit for his music.

What are the other copyright lawsuits against Sheeran?

A year back, Sheeran won a copyright infringement case in the UK over his 2017 hit “Shape of You”, following which he expressed how such accusations and cases were“really damaging to the songwriting industry.”

Moreover, in 2016, Sheeran was accused of copying aspects of his song “Photograph” from Matt Cardle’s song, “Amazing”. Cardle was the winner of the British TV show “The X Factor” and had performed the song, originally written by two songwriters, Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard who went on to sue Ed Sheeran on grounds that he copied it “note-for-note”. However, this case was settled a year later, when the names of the “Amazing” songwriters were added to the credits of Sheeran’s “Photograph”.

While copyright disputes have existed “ever since pop music began making money”, there has been a significant rise in copyright cases in the US since the 2015 trial which resulted in more than 5 million dollars awarded to Marvin Gaye’s estate in damages, pursuant to the court finding “Blurred Lines” artists, Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, guilty of copying Gaye’s song “Got to Give It Up.” However, the “Blurred Lines” case “shocked many legal experts — and musicians — who believed that Mr. Thicke and Mr. Williams were being penalized for using basic musical building blocks, like harmonies and rhythmic patterns, that had long been considered free for any musician to use,” the NYT said.

However, in 2020, the ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the Led Zeppelin case, altered the trajectory of musical copyright claims, while holding that some elements of artist’s works are so generic that only “virtually identical” versions can infringe their copyright and “only a minimal or thin level” of copyright applies to them. This proved to be an obstacle for many who filed such musical copyright cases.

What happened in the Led Zeppelin case?

The dispute over Led Zeppelin’s 1971 classic “Stairway to Heaven” arose in 2014 they were accused of stealing portions of the song’s opening riff from Taurus, a song released in 1968 by the American psychedelic band Spirit.

Band frontman and Taurus songwriter, the late Randy Wolfe made the accusations public in an interview towards the end of his life. Shortly before he died in 1997, Wolfe told a magazine, “…and the guys made millions of bucks on it and never said ‘thank you,’ never said, ‘can we pay you some money for it?’ It’s kind of a sore point with me.”

Taking note of this, in 2014, a journalist named Michael Skidmore, sued Led Zeppelin for copyright on behalf of Wolfe’s estate. The suit sought songwriting credit for Wolfe and damages. However, at the end of the trial, the jury in 2016 concluded that “Taurus” and “Stairway to Heaven” were not intrinsically similar. Subsequently, the plaintiffs appealed against the verdict, leading to a 2018 ruling by an appeals court in California that overturned the earlier order and said that the trial court had erred in saying that Wolfe’s song’s “descending chromatic scales, arpeggios or short sequences of three notes” were not protected by copyright. Moreover, the Court of Appeals noted that the version of Taurus played before the jury, differed from its sheet music version which was protected by copyright.

The case came up for hearing again in March 2020, before the Ninth Court of Appeals, which upheld the original verdict given by the jury in 2016. While the plaintiffs turned towards the Supreme Court, in October 2020, the SCOTUS declined to hear the appeal over the originality of the British band Led Zeppelin’s 1971 classic, bringing a definitive halt to the case.