Jury will decide Marvin Gaye copyright claims against Ed Sheeran
A US judge has rejected Ed Sheeran’s request to dismiss a lawsuit which accuses him of copying parts of Marvin Gaye’s 1973 classic “Let’s Get It On”.
In his decision released on Thursday, January 3, at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Louis Stanton said there were “substantial similarities” between the musical elements of “Let’s Get It On” and Sheeran’s song “Thinking out Loud”.
Stanton said a jury should decide whether Sheeran, who has denied the claims, infringes the copyright of “Let’s Get It On”.
The case against Sheeran, Sony/ATV Music Publishing and Atlantic Records was originally filed in November 2017 by the estate and heirs of the late producer Ed Townsend, who co-wrote “Let’s Get It On” with Gaye.
In his opinion, Stanton said there were similarities between the bass lines and percussion of the two songs and that listeners may find the “aesthetic appeal” of both to be similar, but it was in dispute whether the harmonic and rhythmic composition of “Let’s Get It On” was too common to merit copyright protection.
Sheeran previously argued that “Thinking Out Loud” was characterised by “sombre, melancholic tones, addressing long-lasting, romantic love”, while Gaye’s song was a “sexual anthem”.
In the most recent filing, Stanton said he was unsure which view the jury will side with, but that it may be “impressed by footage of a Sheeran live performance which shows him seamlessly transitioning between “Let’s Get It On” and “Thinking Out Loud”.
Townsend’s family are looking forward to the case being heard in court, their lawyer Pat Frank told Reuters.
They say that Sheeran and the record companies “copied the heart of Let's Get It On and repeated it continuously throughout Thinking Out Loud”.
Sheeran and the record companies have not yet responded publicly to Stanton’s ruling.
Stanton is also overseeing a separate $100 million case over the same song, launched in June 2018 by US-based Structured Asset Sales (SAS), which part-owns the copyright for “Let’s Get It On”.
SAS alleged that Sheeran’s 2014 song “Thinking Out Loud” copied various elements of “Let’s Get It On”. These elements include the melody, rhythms, harmonies, drums, bass line, backing chorus, and tempo.
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