Ed Sheeran has won a High Court copyright battle over his 2017 smash hit Shape of You. A judge ruled on Wednesday that the singer-songwriter had not plagiarized the 2015 song Oh Why by Sami Chokri. Sheeran says that while he’s “obviously happy” with the ruling, he hopes that future “baseless claims” are avoidable.
Chokri, a grime artist who performs as Sami Switch, accused Sheeran and two of his co-writers of plagiarism, claiming that the “Oh I” hook was “strikingly similar” to the “Oh Why” riff on his own track.
RELATED: Beautiful Sneakers: The 10 Most Expensive Sneakers In Ed Sheeran’s Collection
Chokri dropped Oh Why in 2015 followed by Sheeran’s Shape Of You in 2017. Legal proceedings followed in 2018, with Sheeran saying that he did not remember hearing Chokri’s song before then.
A post shared by Ed Sheeran (@teddysphotos)
A British judge agreed with Sheeran. The judge said that the singer “neither deliberately nor subconsciously” stole his hook from Chokri’s song when writing the “Oh I” phrase for Shape Of You.” He did acknowledge that there were “similarities between the one-bar phrase” in both of the songs, but stated that “such similarities are only a starting point for a possible infringement” of copyright.
After the judge ruled in his favor on Wednesday, the singer-songwriter took to Instagram where he said: “While we’re obviously happy with the result, I feel like claims like this are way too common now. It’s become a culture where a claim is made with the idea a settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court, even if there’s no basis for the claim.”
“It’s really damaging to the songwriting industry. There’s only so many quotes and so many chords used in pop music,” he continued. “Coincidences are bound to happen if 60,000 songs are released every day on Spotify; that’s 22million songs a year, and there are only 12 notes available.”
Shape of You was one of the biggest songs in 2017. The track was the first to reach 3 billion streams on Spotify and continues to hold the record for the most-streamed song. For his part in writing it, Sheeran was awarded the Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 60th Grammy Awards.
A post shared by Ed Sheeran (@teddysphotos)
Thanks to the hit song, Sheeran reportedly earns $6.5 million a year in streaming royalties. The figure would be higher but the court froze nearly 10% of the payments for the hit track when litigation began.
Source: DailyMail, BBC
Source: Read Full Article
