How Ed Sheeran Won Copyright Legal Battle ‘Shape of You’ 2022?

By Lois Robinett On Apr 7, 2022

Ed Sheeran or Edward Christopher Sheeran MBE is an English singer-songwriter who was born on February 17, 1991. Born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, and reared in Framlingham, Suffolk, he began composing songs at the age of eleven. In early 2011, Sheeran self-released the extended play No. 5 Collaborations Project. He joined with Asylum Records the same year.

Ed Sheeran Debut Albums Awards

Sheeran’s debut album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart in September 2011. “The A-Team,” his first smash single, was included on the album. Ed Sheeran was named Best British Male Solo Artist and British Breakthrough Act at the Brit Awards in 2012.

Ed Sheeran’s second studio album was released in June 2014 topped charts worldwide. In the same year, he got the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors’ Ivor Novello Award for Songwriter of the Year, and he won Album of the Year at the 2015 Brit Awards. It was the second-best-selling album in the world in 2015.

“Thinking Out Loud,” a hit from the album, won him Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance in 2016.

Ed Sheeran’s’ Shape of You’ Break Records

Sheeran’s third album, Division, was released in March 2017 and went on to become the best-selling album of the year worldwide. “Shape of You” and “Castle on the Hill,” the album’s first two singles, debuted at the top of the charts in a number of nations, breaking records.

He also made history by becoming the first musician to have two songs debut in the top ten in the United States in the same week. Ed Sheeran had ten top ten singles on the UK Hits Chart by March 2017, surpassing the record for the most top-ten singles from a single album.

“Perfect,” the album’s fourth single, reached number one in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, where it was also the Christmas number one in 2017. He has been crowned the Global Recording Musician of the Year after being the world’s best-selling artist in 2017.

His fourth studio album, No.6 Collaborations Project, was released in 2019 and debuted at number one in most major markets, spawning three UK number one singles, “I Don’t Care,” “Beautiful People,” and “Take Me Back to London.” In 2021, his fifth studio album debuted at the top of the charts in most major markets.

Ed Sheeran Best-Selling Musician

Sheeran is one of the best-selling musicians in the world, with more than 150 million albums sold globally. He has 84.5 million RIAA-certified sales in the United States, and two of his albums are among the best-selling albums in UK chart history.

In December 2019, the Official Charts Company named him an artist of the decade for having the highest combined success in the UK album and singles charts over the decade. Spotify ranked him the second most-streamed artist of the decade. His Tour, which began in March 2017, became the highest-grossing of all time in August 2019.

Ed Sheeran, a graduate of London’s National Youth Theatre, has acted in a number of films, including the 2019 feature Yesterday.

Ed Sheeran Won Copyright Legal Battle ‘Shape of You’

After winning his legal battle with the composers of a song he claimed he plagiarised, Ed Sheeran warned that pop singers should not be made “easy targets” for copyright disputes.

A High Court judge decided that the singer did not plagiarise a portion of his successful song, Shape of You, from Sami Chokri’s song Oh Why.
Switch – actual name Sami Chokri – and fellow songwriter Ross O’Donoghue wanted to be added to the composition credits for Shape of You, the most-streamed song ever on Spotify, and Ed Sheeran took legal action.

The judge, on the other hand, found that Sheeran would be right in believing their request was “a ploy meant to extract a settlement” – in other words, money and/or credit without having to go to court.

Ed Sheeran, a British singer-songwriter, won his copyright case in London’s High Court on Wednesday, April 6 2022, after a judge determined that his hit song Shape Of You did not use melodic phrases from another song. When penning the worldwide breakthrough hit, Ed Sheeran “neither purposefully nor unconsciously” plagiarized a lyric from British grime music, Oh Why, according to Judge Antony Zacaroli.
With almost three billion streams, Shape of You, which was published in 2017, is still the most-streamed song on Spotify.

Ed Sheeran, 31, earned a Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance for the song. He, along with a few others, is credited with penning the song.

However, two additional songwriters, Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue claimed that the song sounded identical to one they created called Oh Why which Chokri performed under the stage name Sami Switch. During the 11-day trial, Sheeran burst into song and hummed musical scales and melodies when he was questioned about the song’s composition.

He maintained that the “pentatonic pattern” utilised in both songs was quite frequent in music, and he demonstrated his argument by singing a snippet of Nina Simone’s classic “Feeling Good.” The singer denied “borrowing” ideas from unknown songwriters, telling the court that he “always tried to be fully fair” when thanking authors.

In 2018, Sheeran and the song’s other credited writers sued Chokri and McDaid, requesting that the High Court rule that they had not infringed on Chokri and O’Donoghue’s copyright.

This spurred the couple to file their own lawsuit, alleging “copyright infringements, damages, and an account of profit in relation to the alleged infringement.”

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Conclusion

Ed Sheeran or Edward Christopher Sheeran MBE is an English singer-songwriter who was born on February 17, 1991. He began writing songs at the age of eleven, when he was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, and raised in Framlingham, Suffolk.

Following charges of copying from a rival UK artist, British musician Ed Sheeran has won a copyright battle over his biggest ever song. Sami Switch, a grime singer, had accused Sheeran of stealing sections of his song for Sheeran’s 2017 album Shape of You.