ED SHEERAN has won a High Court copyright battle over his 2017 smash hit song 'Shape of You'.
A judge ruled today that he did not plagiarised a 2015 song from Sami Chokri by the name of 'Oh Why'.
Chokri, who performs under the name Sami Switch , had claimed that the hook in Sheeran's song was "strikingly similar to an "Oh why" refrain in his own track, however Sheeran said he did not remember hearing Oh Why before the legal case.
Check out the comparison below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dylhC0ikNA
Judge Antony Zacaroli ruled that Sheeran had "neither deliberately nor subconsciously copied" Chokri's song.
He also said there are significant difference between the two songs, and that he was satisfied Sheeran did not subconsciously copy Oh Why.
Sheeran wrote the song with two collaborators, John McDaid from Snow Patrol and Steven McCutcheon.
The song went on to become the most streamed song ever on Spotify, and currently has over 3 billions streams.
Speaking in a video posted to Twitter after this morning's ruling, Sheeran said:
"Whilst we're obviously happy with the result, I feel like claims like this are way to common now and have become a culture where a claim is made with the idea that a settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court, even if there's no base for the claim.
"It's really damaging to the song writing industry," he continued. "There's only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music. Coincidences are bound to happen if 60,000 sounds are being released every day on Spotify. That's 22 million songs a year, and there's only twelve notes that are available.
"I don't want to take anything away from the pain and hurt suffered from both sides of this case, but I just want to say I'm not an entity. I'm not a corporation. I'm a human being, I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a son.
"Lawsuits are not a pleasant experience, and I hope that with this ruling in the future baseless claims like this can be avoided. This really does have to end. Me, Johnny and Steve are very grateful for all the support that has been sent to use by fellow songwriters over the last few weeks. Hopefully we can all get back to writing songs, rather than having to prove that we can write them."
Ed’s been dealing with a lawsuit recently and he wanted to share a few words about it all pic.twitter.com/hnKm7VFcor
— Ed Sheeran HQ (@edsheeran) April 6, 2022
Pop-star Dua Lipa is currently involved in two lawsuits claiming that her songwriting team have plagiarised other artists for her song 'Levitating,' which was named the Billboard top song of 2021.
Katy Perry also also recently won an appeal which means she will no longer have to pay $2.8m (£2.1m) to a rapper who said she stole his song on her 2013 song 'Dark Horse'.
In 2018, a judged also ruled against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams in favour of Marvin Gaye’s family in a long-running lawsuit involving copyright infringement surrounding their song 'Blurred Lines' and Gaye’s 1977 hit 'Got to Give It Up.'
