Ed Sheeran Wins, ‘Shape of You’ Plagiarism Lawsuit.
'Pitchfork' reports that on April 6, a British judge ruled that Sheeran "neither deliberately nor subconsciously copied" parts of a song written by Sami Chokri for his megahit, "Shape of You.".
The 11-day hearing examined whether the
hook in Sheeran's single was inspired by
Chokri's 2015 song, "Oh Why.".
According to 'The New York Times,' Chokri's lawyer called Sheeran "a magpie" and said he “borrows ideas and throws them into his songs.” .
Sheeran has maintained that he'd never even heard the song prior to the lawsuit.
The judge ruled that there was "no more than speculative" evidence Sheeran had ever heard the song.
After the ruling, Sheeran took to
social media to address the lawsuit.
I feel like claims like this are way too common now...It's really damaging to the songwriting industry. There's only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music, Ed Sheeran, via Twitter.
Coincidences are bound to happen if 60,000 songs are released every day on Spotify. That's 22 million songs a year, and there's only 12 notes that are available, Ed Sheeran, via Twitter.
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, Ed Sheeran, via Twitter.
I hope with this ruling, it means in the future that baseless claims like this can be avoided....Hopefully we can all get back to writing songs, rather than having to prove that we can write them, Ed Sheeran, via Twitter