British musician Ed Sheeran won his civil trial in New York on Thursday, May 4, where he was sued for plagiarizing a song by American Marvin Gaye.
A 10-day-old Manhattan federal court jury ruled that the 32-year-old singer created his song “independently” and that his 2014 global hit, Thinking out Loud was therefore not a partial copy of the famous Let’s Get It On by the prince of soul Marvin Gaye. He was being sued by the heirs of songwriter Ed Townsend, who created this soul classic in 1973 with Mr. Gaye. According to them, Thinking out Loud bore so many similarities to Let’s Get It On that it violated the song’s copyright protection.
At the start of the trial, attorney Ben Crump told jurors, on behalf of the Townsend heirs, that Mr Sheeran himself sometimes performed the two songs together. The jury saw video from a concert in Switzerland in which Sheeran can be heard going from Let’s Get It On to Thinking out Loud on stage. Ben Crump assured that this was irrefutable proof that he had stolen the famous song.
During his testimony, Ed Sheeran repeatedly took a guitar from behind him on the witness stand to show how he created “mashups” of songs during his concerts to “spice up” his show for his large crowds.