Ed Sheeran beats Marvin Gaye copyright appeal over ‘Thinking Out Loud’

An appeals court has ruled that Ed Sheeran did not infringe the copyright of Marvin Gaye‘s ‘Let’s Get It On’.

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Today (November 1), The US Court Of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that Sheeran’s 2014 hit track did not infringe on Gaye’s iconic track, citing that both songs only share the “fundamental musical building blocks”, per Billboard.

The original case 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’. The case claimed that the ‘Lego House’ singer had copied a chord progression and rhythm from the iconic ‘1973’ song.

The appeals court said that the suit was seeking “a monopoly over a combination of two fundamental musical building blocks.”

A panel of appeals court judges also wrote: “The four-chord progression at issue—ubiquitous in pop music—even coupled with a syncopated harmonic rhythm, is too well-explored to meet the originality threshold that copyright law demands.

“Overprotecting such basic elements would threaten to stifle creativity and undermine the purpose of copyright law.”

Sheeran’s attorney Donald Zakarian told Rolling Stone: “We are gratified that the Second Circuit agreed with Judge Stanton that Ed Sheeran and Amy Wadge did not infringe ‘Let’s Get It On’ in creating ‘Thinking Out Loud’. This ruling is consistent with the jury’s rejection of any claim of infringement in the Griffin case, finding that Ed and Amy independently created ‘Thinking Out Loud.’”

The verdict comes a year after Sheeran was found not liable for copying the song after being sued by the estate of Ed Townshend. At the time, Sheeran reportedly took to the stand in Manhattan to insist he would be “done” with music if found guilty.

The ‘Shape Of You’ singer previously said he was pleased with the outcome but was “unbelievably frustrated that baseless claims like this are allowed to go to court at all,” per Rolling Stone.

He continued: “It’s simply wrong. By stopping this practice we can also properly support genuine music copyright claims so that legitimate claims are rightly heard and resolved,” and called the suit against him a “bogus claim.”

In other news, Kneecap recently met up with Sheeran ahead of a recent live show and introduced him to Buckfast and Beamish. Elsewhere, a sculptor recently handcrafted a Lego version of the ‘Drunk’ singer.

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