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Ed Sheeran wins Shape of You copyright case
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Judge rules in favour of Ed Sheeran in “Shape of you” copyright case
Ed Sheeran has won a copyright dispute in the High Court over his 2017 hit Shape of You.
On Wednesday, a judge determined that the singer-songwriter had not plagiarized Sami Chokri’s 2015 song Oh Why.
Chokri, a grime musician who goes by the moniker Sami Switch, claimed that Sheeran’s “Oh I” hook sounded “strikingly similar” to a “Oh why” refrain in his own song.
Sheeran stated that he had not heard Oh Why before the legal dispute.
“Shape of You” was the best-selling song in the UK in 2017 and is Spotify’s most-streamed song of all time.
Judge Antony Zacaroli ruled that Sheeran had “neither deliberately nor subconsciously copied” Chokri’s song.
He recognized that the “one-bar phrase” in Shape of You and Oh Why were “similar,” but added that “such similarities are simply a starting point for a prospective copyright violation.”
He stated there were “differences in the relevant parts” of the songs after studying the musical elements, which “give persuasive evidence that the ‘Oh I‘ phrase” in Sheeran’s song “originated from sources other than Oh Why.”
He went on to say that the defence’s claim that Sheeran had heard Chokri’s song before penning Shape of You was “speculative at best.”
“I find, as a matter of fact, that he had not heard it,” he said.
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Sheeran worked on his number-one single with two collaborators: Snow Patrol’s John McDaid and producer Steven McCutcheon, both of whom denied ever hearing Oh Why before.
Legal proceedings began in 2018 and culminated in an 11-day trial last month in London.
Reacting to the good news, Sheeran took to social media to drop a video talking about the lawsuit.
See the video below;
Ed’s been dealing with a lawsuit recently and he wanted to share a few words about it all pic.twitter.com/hnKm7VFcor
— Ed Sheeran HQ (@edsheeran) April 6, 2022