Ed Sheeran has won another copyright case regarding his 2014 Number One hit ‘Thinking Out Loud’.
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Earlier this month, the pop star was found to have not copied Marvin Gaye‘s ‘Let’s Get It On’ for ‘Thinking Out Loud’, a US court ruled in a high-profile case.
The case was brought against the pop star in 2016 by Ed Townsend – one of the co-writers on Gaye’s classic 1973 track – who accused Sheeran of copying the song on his 2014 hit.
The verdict came after Sheeran reportedly took to the stand in Manhattan to insist he would be “done” with music if found guilty.
Now, the star has won another lawsuit that was filed in 2018 by Structured Asset Sales, the partial owners of the copyright of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote ‘Let’s Get It On’.
In his verdict, New York federal judge Louis L. Stanton dismissed the case on similar grounds as the other, more high-profile proceeding, saying: “It is an unassailable reality that the chord progression and harmonic rhythm in ‘Let’s Get It On’ are so commonplace, in isolation and in combination, that to protect their combination would give ‘Let’s Get It On’ an impermissible monopoly over a basic musical building block.”
He added: “There is no genuine issue of material fact as to whether defendants infringed the protected elements of ‘Let’s Get It On. The answer is that they did not.”
Elsewhere, Sheeran‘s new album ‘Subtract’ has become the fastest-selling album of 2023 and is heading towards becoming a sixth consecutive Number One album for the singer-songwriter.