Ed Sheeran’s court case into copyright of ‘Shape Of You’ begins

nme.com:

Ed Sheeran’s court case into the copyright of ‘Shape Of You’ has begun today (March 4).He appeared at the High Court this morning for the start of a three-week legal battle over the copyright of song ‘Shape Of You’.Sheeran is involved in a dispute with two musicians who claim his 2017 hit borrows parts of their song ‘Oh Why’, which was released in March 2015.Sami Chokri (who performs under Sami Switch) and Ross O’Donoghue claim Sheeran’s song is similar to “particular lines and phrases” of their own song.Sheeran and his co-writers, Steven McCutcheon and John McDaid, were barred by music licensing body PRS for Music from collecting an estimated £20m in royalties from the performances or broadcasts of Shape of You after the songwriters of ‘Oh Why’ accused him of “appropriating” their music.They accused him of partaking “consciously or subconsciously in the habit of appropriating the compositional skill and labour of other songwriters”.Chokri claims that he sent the track to Sheeran’s close inner circle in a bid to work with the star, but later heard the chorus on ‘Shape Of You’ – which became the biggest selling single of 2017 in the UK.

Last year, it became the first song to hit three billion streams.Sheeran denied the claims and had previously issued legal proceedings in May 2018, asking the High Court to declare that he and the song’s co-authors had not infringed Chokri and O’Donoghue’s copyright.However, two months later, the pair issued their own claim for “copyright infringement, damages and an account of profits in relation to the alleged infringement,” according to court documents.In a November 2020 ruling, Judge Francesca Kaye said the parties involved “anticipated that they would incur costs in the region of.