- Ed Sheeran will go on trial for $100 million for alleged copyright infringement.
A federal judge in Manhattan has taken legal action against the 31-year-old singer-songwriter, who is accused of taking elements of Marvin Gaye’s 1973 classic ‘Let’s Get It On’ to compose his own 2014 hit ‘Thinking Out Loud’. ‘.
Judge Louis Stanton said “there is no clear cut rule” and a jury trial will be necessary to resolve the issue, Billboard reported.
“There is no clear rule that the combination of two unprotectable elements is not numerous enough to constitute an original work,” the judge wrote. “A work may be eligible for copyright protection even if it is entirely a compilation of non-copyrightable elements,” he added.
According to the publication, a trial date has not yet been set.
The matter between Sheeran and the estate of the song’s late co-writer, Ed Townsend, first originated in 2016. That year, the singer was sued by the songwriter’s family, but the case was ultimately dismissed the following year.
After the Townsend family sold a third of their shares in ‘Let’s Get It On’ to Structured Asset Sales, the organization relaunched the lawsuit in 2018 for $100 million.
Structured Asset Sales claims that Sheeran’s monstrous single from Sheeran’s ‘X’ album uses melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, instrumental and dynamic elements taken from Gaye’s song.
It’s not the first time Sheeran has been accused of copying another artist’s music.
In June, months after winning his lawsuit for plagiarism of the hit song ‘Shape of You’, Ed Sheeran was awarded more than a million dollars in court costs.
Sheeran and his two co-writers, Steve McCutcheon and Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid, had been locked in a legal battle for years with Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue, a songwriting couple who claimed he copied their song ‘Oh Why’ for the mega-hit 2017 .
David Pullman, the owner of Structured Asset Sales, said after the ruling that he is “glad” the case is going to a jury, and that he “looks forward to further success in this case involving the largest copyright infringement in history.” “Billboard stated.