Cousins! A jury has officially ruled that Ed Sheeran is not liable for copyright infringement in the issued lawsuit where he was accused of sampling elements from Marvin Gaye ‘s legendary song “Let’s Get It On” for his own 2014 hit single “Thinking Out Loud”
According to PEOPLE; an unanimous verdict was reached by a jury of seven in under three hours within a New York City courtroom earlier today. Reports read that Ed had been sued by the family of Ed Townsend, the confirmed co-creator of ‘Let’s Get It On.”
The suit was issued in 2017 as the family of Townsend argued that there are, “overt common elements” and “striking similarities”. However Ed’s legal team argued that the similarities are nothing more than a coincidence.
Following the delivered verdict Ed stated to reporters outside the courthouse,“ I’m obviously very happy with the outcome of the case, and it looks like I’m not having 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.”
“We have spent the last eight years talking about two songs with dramatically different lyrics, melodies and four chords which are also different and used by songwriters every day, all over the world. These chords are common building blocks, which were used to create music long before ‘Let’s Get It On’ was written and will be used to make music long after we are all gone.”
He explained that there was a larger issue at hand other than accusations ofwrongful sampling, “If the jury had decided this matter the other way, we might as well say goodbye to the creative freedom of songwriters,” Sheeran continued. “We need to be able to write our original music and engage in independent creation without worrying every step of the way that such creativity will be wrongly called into question.”
“I feel like the truth was heard and the truth was believed,” said Ed following the delivered verdict “It’s nice that we can both move on with our lives now — it’s sad that it had to come to this.”
Cousins what are your thoughts on this?