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Ed Sheeran wins 'Shape of You' copyright dispute

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Agence France-Presse

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img alt="British singer Ed Sheeran arrives for the NRJ Music Awards 2021 at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France in this file photo. Sebastien Nogier, EPA-EFE" src="https://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2022/tvpatrol/04/06/ed-sheeran.jpg"/><figcaption>British singer Ed Sheeran arrives for the NRJ Music Awards 2021 at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France in this file photo. Sebastien Nogier, EPA-EFE</figcaption></figure></div>LONDON -- British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran on Wednesday won his copyright trial at London&#x27;s High Court after a judge ruled that his hit song &quot;Shape of You&quot; did not lift musical phrases from another track.Judge Antony Zacaroli said that Sheeran &quot;neither deliberately nor subconsciously&quot; copied a phrase from British grime track, &quot;Oh Why,&quot; when writing the worldwide smash hit.&quot;Shape of You,&quot; released in 2017, remains the most-streamed song ever on Spotify, with more than 3 billion streams. It won Sheeran, 31, a Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance. He, along with several others, has a writing credit on the track.But two other songwriters, Sami Chokri and Ross O&#x27;Donoghue, alleged that the song had musical similarities to one they wrote called &quot;Oh Why,&quot; performed under Chokri&#x27;s stage-name Sami Switch.Judge Zacaroli ruled on Wednesday that &quot;there are obvious similarities&quot; between hooks in the two songs, but that there were also &quot;important differences.&quot;While both hooks drew from the minor pentatonic scale, &quot;there are countless songs in the pop, rock, folk and blues genres where the melody is drawn exclusively&quot; from the same scale, he said.Zacaroli also said that the two phrases &quot;play very different roles in their respective songs.&quot;The claimants hook &quot;is the central part of the song&quot; whereas in Sheeran&#x27;s hit, it is &quot;something catchy to fill the bar before each repeated phrase &#x27;I&#x27;m in love with your body.&#x27;&quot;Sheeran attended court during the 11-day trial, bursting into song and humming musical scales and melodies as he was questioned over how the song was written.<div>&#x27;Shocked&#x27;</div>The singer denied he &quot;borrows&quot; ideas from unknown songwriters and told court he &quot;always tried to be completely fair&quot; in crediting contributors.Sheeran and the song&#x27;s other credited writers launched legal action against Chokri and McDaid in 2018, asking the High Court to declare they had not infringed Chokri and O&#x27;Donoghue&#x27;s copyright.This prompted the pair to launch their own claim for &quot;copyright infringements, damages and an account of the profit in relation to the alleged infringement.&quot;Lawyer Andrew Sutcliffe, representing the aggrieved songwriters, told the judge Sheeran was a &quot;magpie&quot; who &quot;borrows ideas&quot; and will sometimes not acknowledge them.Chokri told the trial he was &quot;shocked&quot; when he first heard &quot;Shape Of You&quot; on the radio.Sheeran&#x27;s lawyers told the High Court that he and his co-writers have no memory of having heard the song &quot;Oh Why&quot; at the time.The PRS for Music, which pays out royalties for the use of music, has temporarily halted royalty payments.Attendees at the high-profile trial inadvertently heard a snippet for free when an unreleased track was accidentally aired in court.&quot;That&#x27;s a song I wrote last January,&quot; a confused Sheeran told his lawyers as the clip of the hitherto unplayed song was heard in London&#x27;s High Court. &quot;How have you got that?&quot;One of the lawyers said the incident happened &quot;by mistake&quot; through the use of an iTunes account on the computer of Steven McCutcheon, one of the co-writers of &quot;Shape of You.&quot;<div>© Agence France-Presse</div>

British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran on Wednesday won his copyright trial at London's High Court after a judge ruled that his hit song 'Shape of You' did not lift musical phrases from another track.