Ed Sheeran had to go back into trouble with the law because his song Thinking Out Loud was allegedly a plagiarism of Marvin Gaye 's popular 1973 song Let's Get It On. This started in 2016 when Ed Townsend, who is also the co-writer of Marvin Gaye on the song, sued Sheeran for the song Thinking Out Loud which he considered to have similarities.
Then a company called SAS which owns a third of the shares of Townsend's copyright again filed the same lawsuit in 2018. The lawsuit was successfully decided by a judge in a jury trial on Thursday September 29, 2022 as informed by Billboard. However, attorney for Ed Sheeran is of the view that the lawsuit filed by SAS is invalid because the combination of simple elements in the song allegedly stolen by his client is not unique enough to be copyrighted.
Judge Louis Stanton said there were no clear rules for deciding such questions. Stanton asked Sheeran to make an argument in front of the other jurors.“ There is no clear-cut rule that the combination of the two elements that cannot be protected is not sufficient enough to produce an original work. A work can be copyrighted even though it is a complete compilation of elements that cannot be protected ," he said as quoted by Billboard.
Judge Stanton also asked the jury to decide whether SAS could include concert revenue as compensation, with Stanton rejecting Sheeran's argument that ticket sales had nothing to do with the alleged infringement. The Guardian reports that SAS is seeking $100 million in damages for Ed Sheeran and his co-writers deemed to have copied and exploited without permission or credit, the Marvin Gaye song. Including not limited to melody, rhythm, harmony, drums, bassline, tempo to repetition.
The trial for this copyright case will take place in the federal courthouse in Manhattan, United States, although the timing is still unknown. This is not the first trial the British singer has faced. Sheeran once won copyright in a British court in the aftermath of the case for the song Shape of You, which was not proven to have plagiarized Sami Chokri's Oh Why in April. He also won a $20 million lawsuit for his song Photograph in 2017.
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