Ed Sheeran: Judge says musician must go to trial over claims he copied a song

Ed Sheeran will be going to trial in the United States following a claim that his hit song Thinking Out Loud copied another artist's track.

The pop star's lawyers had tried to convince the judge to reject the copyright lawsuit, but the judge said there was "no bright-line rule" for the case.

This means that the judge believes that whether Ed Sheeran copied the other artist's track or not should be decided by a jury after hearing evidence from both sides of the case.

Ed and his co-writer Amy Wadge are being sued for £90 million ($100 million) in damages by a company called Structured Asset Sales, who partly own the track that they say has been copied.

They claim the track's "melody, rhythms, harmonies, drums, bass line, backing chorus, tempo, syncopation and looping" has been "copied and exploited, without authorisation or credit".

This means that they think Ed and his co-writer Amy have taken lots of different parts of this older track to use in Thinking Out Loud, without crediting or paying the track's writers - Marvin Gaye and Ed Townsend.

Ed's lawyers have not yet commented on the news that the case is going to trial.

Best-selling singer-songwriter Marvin Gaye is one of the writers of the track that Ed Sheeran is accused of copying

This is not the first time Ed Sheeran has been accused of copying another artist's work.

His hit song Shape of You was the subject of a trial in March 2022, after the singer and his co-writers were accused of copying part of a track called Oh Why by Sami Chokri and Ross O'Donoghue.

But the case was thrown out, as the judge believed that Ed and his co-writers had not "deliberately or subconsciously" copied the Oh Why track.

After that trial, Ed made a comment on Instagram, saying he hoped that similar claims could be avoided in the future.

"It's really damaging to the song writing industry," he posted on Instagram at the time.

"There's only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music," he added, saying that coincidences are bound to happen.

But the judge across this latest claim in the US, Louis Stanton, said that a jury must decide whether or not Ed's Thinking Out Loud did in fact copy the track written by Marvin Gaye and Ed Townsend.

Ed Sheeran's lawyers had tried to defend against the accusation, saying that the similarities between the two songs were not valid.

The judge ultimately decided that the case should go to trial, saying: "Although the two musical compositions are not identical, a jury could find that the overlap between the songs' combination of chord progression and harmonic rhythm is very close."

A date has not yet been set for this trial, which will take place in New York.