Ed Sheeran Wins The Copyright Dispute For Shape Of You And Slams 'Baseless' Charges
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 noted after the verdict that such "baseless" charges are "far too common."
He stated there was now a culture "where a claim is made with the premise that a settlement will be cheaper than pursuing it to court" in a video on social media.
"It's incredibly harmful to the songwriting industry," he added. In mainstream music, there are only so many notes and so few chords.
"When 60,000 songs are released on Spotify every day, it's sure to happen by chance." There are only 12 notes available, therefore that's 22 million tunes per year."
Shape of You was the best-selling song in the UK in 2017 and is Spotify's most-streamed song of all time.
Sheeran had "neither knowingly nor unconsciously plagiarized" Chokri's music, according to Judge Antony Zacaroli.
He acknowledged that the "one-bar phrase" in Shape of You and Oh Why were "similar," but added that "such similarities are only a starting point for a possible copyright infringement."