Judge in Ed Sheeran song-theft case declines to ban mash-up video from trial

completemusicupdate.com:

The US judge overseeing the latest Ed Sheeran song-theft legal battle has declined to ban the plaintiffs in the case from showing a YouTube video in which the musician himself mashes together his song with the one he’s accused of ripping off.

Though Sheeran’s lawyers are still free to object again to that video being shown to jurors when the dispute is properly in court.This is the legal battle where Sheeran is accused of ripping off Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’ on his 2014 track ‘Thinking Out Loud’.

He’s being sued by the estate of the earlier song’s co-writer Ed Townsend and the dispute is due to get to trial next month.The YouTube clip in question is of Sheeran playing ‘Thinking Out Loud’ at a concert in 2014 and inserting a bit of Gaye’s song into the middle of the performance.

Legal reps on the Townsend side want to show the video in court, reckoning it illustrates both the similarities between the two songs, and Sheeran’s awareness of them.However, Sheeran’s lawyers argue, neither the similarities nor their client’s awareness of them mean that Sheeran deliberately copied ‘Let’s Get It On’, nor that the songs are sufficiently similar to constitute copyright infringement.