Ed Sheeran has won the High Court copyright battle over his 2017 hit
‘Shape Of You.’ The singer has hit out over ‘baseless claims’ and how
they are damaging the song writing community.
A judge ruled on Wednesday 6th April that Sheeran had not plagiarised
Sam Chokri’s 2015 song ‘Oh Why.’ Chokri had claimed that the “Oh I”
hook in ‘Shape of You’ bared similarities to a refrain in his own track.
After the ruling, Sheeran uploaded a video to Instagram expressing how
baseless claims are becoming way too common, saying:
“Where a claim is made with the idea that 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 notes and very few chords used in pop music.
Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being
released every day on Spotify. That’s 22 million songs a year and
there’s only 12 notes that are available.”
Judge Antony Zacaroli has ruled that Sheeran had neither deliberately
nor subconsciously copied Chokri’s song. While acknowledging there are
similarities, he stated that they are only a starting point for possible
infringement of copyright.
Furthermore, he added that there was only “speculative foundation” for
the defendant’s case regarding Sheeran hearing the track before writing
‘Shape of You. He ruled that Sheeran had not heard it.
It is also now assumed that as the trial has reached a verdict, PRS will
now distribute the royalties that were previously frozen. It was estimated
around £20m of royalties for ‘Shape of You’ had been blocked while the
trial was ongoing.
While this is great news for Ed Sheeran, it is also a win for songwriters
showing that baseless claims should not be commonplace, and that song
writing is built on the concept of recycling ideas into new pieces of art.
By Liam Chessell, masters student at Platform One College of Music.
