Ed Sheeran has beaten a lawsuit in the UK over the alleged infringement of his single Shape of You.
The case was brought against Sheeran by a British artist called Sami Chokri (aka Sami Switch), who claimed that Sheeeran ripped off his song Oh Why, which was released in 2015.
The verdict was delivered in Sheeran’s favor in a UK High Court on Wednesday (April 6).
Shape of You was written by Sheeran, Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid and producer Steve Mac. It was released in 2017.
Chokri and songwriter Ross O’Donoghue launched the legal battle four years ago, and it went to trial in London last month.
Judge Antony Zacaroli ruled that Sheeran and his collaborators “neither deliberately nor subconsciously copied” Chokri’s song.
Zacaroli also referred to “similarities between the one-bar phrase” in the two songs as “only a starting point for a possible infringement”.
He added: “The use of the first four notes of the rising minor pentatonic scale for the melody is so short, simple, commonplace and obvious in the context of the rest of the song that it is not credible that Sheeran sought out inspiration from other songs to come up with it.”
He concluded that Sheeran “had not heard” Chokri’s song, in response to the claim that he heard it prior to writing his own song.
In a video statement published on Instagram following the ruling, Sheeran notes that, although the defendants are “happy with the result”, they “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”.
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