US courtroom docket pointers Ed Sheeran didn’t copy Marvin Gaye’s primary in copyright trial

By Associated Press: British singer Ed Sheeran didn’t steal key parts of Marvin Gaye’s primary Nineteen Seventies tune “Let’s Get It On” to create his hit tune “Thinking Out Loud,” a jury acknowledged with a trial verdict on Thursday. This led Sheeran to later joke that he wouldn’t should observe by on his menace to surrender music.

The emotions of an epic copyright fight that stretched all through lots of the ultimate decade spilled out as rapidly as a result of the seven-person jury revealed its verdict after over two hours of deliberations.

Sheeran, 32, briefly dropped his face into his palms in support sooner than standing to hug his authorized skilled, Ilene Farkas. As jurors left the courtroom in entrance of him, Sheeran smiled, nodded his head at various of them, and mouthed the phrases: “Thank you.” Later, he posed for a hallway {{photograph}} with a juror who lingered behind.

He moreover approached plaintiff Kathryn Townsend Griffin, the daughter of Ed Townsend, who co-created the 1973 soul primary with Gaye and had testified. They spoke for about 10 minutes, hugging and smiling and, at one stage, clasping their palms collectively.

Sheeran later addressed reporters exterior the courthouse, revisiting his declare made by the trial that he would take into consideration quitting songwriting if he misplaced the case.

“I am obviously very happy with the outcome of this case, and it looks like I’m not going to have to retire from my day job, after all. But at the same time, I am unbelievably frustrated that baseless claims like this are allowed to go to court at all,” the singer said, reading from a prepared statement.

He also said he missed his grandmother’s funeral in Ireland because of the trial, and that he “will never get that time back.”

Inside the courthouse after the verdict, Griffin said she was relieved.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” she said of the trial. “We can be friends.”

She said she was pleased Sheeran approached her.

“It showed me who he was,” Griffin said.

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She said her copyright lawsuit wasn’t personal but she wanted to follow through on a promise to her father to protect his intellectual property.

A juror, Sophia Neis, told reporters afterward that there was not immediate consensus when deliberations began.

“Everyone had opinions going in. Both sides had advocates, said Neis, 23. ”There was a lot of back and forth.”

The verdict capped a two-week trial that featured a courtroom performance by Sheeran as the singer insisted, sometimes angrily, that the trial was a threat to all musicians who create their own music.

Sheeran sat with his legal team throughout the trial, defending himself against the lawsuit by Townsend’s heirs, who had said “Thinking Out Loud” had so many similarities to “Let’s Get It On” that it violated the song’s copyright protection.

It was not the first court victory for a singer whose musical style draws from classic soul, pop and R&B, making him a target for copyright lawsuits. A year ago, Sheeran won a U.K. copyright battle over his 2017 hit “Shape of You” and then decried what he labeled a “culture” of baseless lawsuits that force settlements from artists eager to avoid a trial’s expense.

Outside court, Sheeran said he doesn’t want to be taken advantage of.

“I am just a guy with a guitar who loves writing music for people to enjoy,” he said. “I am not and will never allow myself to be a piggy bank for anyone to shake.”

At the trial’s start, attorney Ben Crump told jurors on behalf of the Townsend heirs that Sheeran himself sometimes performed the two songs together. The jury saw video of a concert in Switzerland in which Sheeran can be heard segueing on stage between “Let’s Get It On” and “Thinking Out Loud.” Crump said it was “smoking gun” proof Sheeran stole from the famous tune.

In her closing argument on Wednesday, Farkas said Crump’s “smoking gun was shooting blanks.”

She said the only common elements between the two songs were “basic to the tool kit of all songwriters” and “the scaffolding on which all songwriting is built.”

“They did not copy it. Not consciously. Not unconsciously. Not at all,” Farkas said.

When Sheeran testified over two days for the defense, he repeatedly picked up a guitar resting behind him on the witness stand to demonstrate how he seamlessly creates “mashups” of two or three songs during concerts to “spice it up a bit” for his sizeable crowds.

The English pop star’s cheerful attitude on display under questioning from his attorney all but vanished under cross examination.

“When you write songs, somebody comes after you,” Sheeran testified, saying the case was being closely watched by others in the industry.

He insisted that he and the song’s co-writer — Amy Wadge — stole nothing from “Let’s Get it On.”

Townsend’s heirs said in their lawsuit that “Thinking Out Loud” had “striking similarities” and “overt common elements” that made it obvious that it had copied “Let’s Get It On,” a song that has been featured in numerous films and commercials and scored hundreds of millions of stream spins and radio plays in the past half century.

Sheeran’s song, which came out in 2014, was a hit, winning a Grammy for song of the year.

Sheeran’s label, Atlantic Records, and Sony/ATV Music Publishing were also named as defendants in the “Thinking Out Loud” lawsuit, but the focus of the trial was Sheeran.

Wadge, who was not a defendant, testified on his behalf and hugged Sheeran after the verdict.

Gaye was killed in 1984 at age 44, shot by his father as he tried to intervene in a fight between his parents. He had been a Motown superstar since the 1960s, although his songs released in the 1970s made him a generational musical giant.

Townsend, who also wrote the 1958 R&B doo-wop hit “For Your Love,” was a singer, songwriter and lawyer who died in 2003. Griffin, his daughter, testified during the trial that she thought Sheeran was “a great artist with a great future.”