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Ed Sheeran Wins ‘Shape Of You’ Copyright Case
Ed Sheeran did not plagiarize another song when writing his 2017 mega hit “Shape Of You,” a judge ruled today, Wednesday, April 6, in London, UK.
The British pop star, as well as co-writers John McDaid of Snow Patrol and producer Steven McCutcheon, had been accused of copying parts of “Oh Why,” a song by Sami Switch release in 2015.
The 11-day trial had concluded March 22, and today, April 6, the verdict was published: Ed Sheeran and his team did not plagiarize the song.
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Ahead of an official press release, Sheeran delivered the following message via his Instagram account:
“Whilst we are obviously happy with the result, I feel like claims like this are way too 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 is really damaging to the songwriting industry. There’s only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music. Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released everyday on Spotify. That’s 22 million songs a year and there’s only 12 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 with this ruling, it means 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 sent to us 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. Thank you.”
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“Shape of You” was the first single of Sheeran’s 2017 album ÷ (Divide). The accompanying tour, which concluded Aug. 26, 2019, set the record for highest-grossing tour to date, logging $775.6 million on 8.9 million tickets at 255 performances over two-and-a-half years.