(New York) The king of British pop Ed Sheeran won his civil trial in New York on Thursday where he was prosecuted for plagiarizing a song by the American prince of soul Marvin Gaye, an emblematic case for the protection of human rights. musical authors.
The consequences of the outcome of this trial were important: a verdict against Ed Sheeran could have “cooled” the artists in their musical creation, warned certain musicologists and jurists.
The Manhattan federal court jury ruled after ten days of trial that the 32-year-old internationally successful singer-songwriter had created his song “independently”. And that his planetary success of 2014 Thinking Out Loud was therefore not a partial copy of the famous Let’s Get It On by African-American Marvin Gaye in 1973.
Ed Sheeran, who has attended the hearings since April 24 defending himself for having plagiarized the title of Marvin Gaye, stood up at the statement of the decision, thanked the jury and gave the hug to his team , according to an AFP journalist in the courtroom.
In a statement leaving the courthouse, he said he was “very happy” with his victory against a “baseless” complaint, but also “incredibly frustrated” that such a case on musical copyrights ” can go to court.
“A guy with a guitar”
“I’m just a guy on the guitar who likes to write songs to please people,” said the star, who is currently on tour in the eastern United States.
The plaintiffs were heirs of Ed Townsend, an American musician and producer who co-wrote the track Let’s Get It On with Marvin Gaye, an African-American soul legend (1939-1984).
The civil party pointed to “striking similarities and obvious common elements” between this song and Thinking Out Loud.
This is the second trial won in a year by Ed Sheeran: he also won a separate legal battle in April 2022 before the High Court in London, which dismissed two musicians accusing him of having copied one of their works for his mega success Shape Of You.
In New York, the British singer-songwriter even had to play the guitar and sing in court as a pledge of good faith.
Quoted by the prosecution, a musicologist had indeed declared that the chord progression on the two pieces of Sheeran and Gaye was almost identical.
The Briton also said that he wrote his success in 2014 with his musical partner Amy Wadge while “getting out of the shower” at home. The track rose to second on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Grammy Award for Best Song in 2016.
“Paranoia”
The risk of the Sheeran trial, experts fear, is the proliferation of copyright disputes and a form of “paranoia” that would develop among musicians terrified of copying each other.
“The world I want to live in is one where no one sue anyone for melodic or harmonic similarities, because they can easily arise by coincidence,” Joe Bennett, a musicologist at Berklee College of Music, told AFP. Massachusetts.
“It shouldn’t fall under copyright protection,” he said.
The work of Motown label king Marvin Gaye had previously been the subject of a lawsuit when his family — who were not a party to the Sheeran lawsuit — won against artists Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over similarities between songs Blurred Lines And Got To Give It Up.
stairway to Heaven
This had surprised the music industry and lawyers who consider that many melodic and harmonic elements belong to the public domain.
In the case stairway to Heavenmuch better known, where the famous British hard rock band Led Zeppelin triumphed over a Californian formation, American justice ruled in 2020 that the legendary 1971 title was not plagiarism.
But for Joseph Fishman, professor of intellectual property law at Vanderbilt University, the Sheeran lawsuit risks setting a precedent: “It can chill songwriters in their way of writing: ‘Will my case end? in justice ?” “.
Especially since in 1976, the Briton George Harrison was held responsible for having “unknowingly” plagiarized He’s so Fine of the group Chiffons for its solo title My Sweet Lord.
The former Beatles had written in his memoirs that he then suffered from “songwriting paranoia”.