Ed Sheeran Lashes Out At Lawsuit After Scoring A Victory In Court
It's been a long and arduous journey for singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran, but it's finally over! After a grueling 11-day trial, a judge ruled that the "Shivers" crooner and his team did not plagiarize portions of his hit song "Shape of You" from "Oh Why," a song written by artists Sami Chokri and Ross O'Donoghue, according to court documents obtained by E! News.
The hard-fought victory followed hours and hours of court proceedings that included a scathing courtroom monologue wherein Chokri and O'Donoghue's attorney, Andrew Sutcliffe, worked overtime to convince the judge that Sheeran and Co. knowingly and willfully plagiarized his clients' work. "Mr. Sheeran is undoubtedly very talented, he is a genius. But he is also a magpie. He borrows ideas and throws them into his songs, sometimes he will acknowledge it but sometimes he won't," Sutcliffe argued (via The Guardian). "Depends on who you are and whether he thinks he can get away with it," he carefully added. But now, it looks as though all of that work was in vain as Sheeran took home the legal W.
Still, Sheeran wasn't done yet. Shortly after the ruling, the "genius" (your words, not ours, Sutcliffe) took to his Instagram account to let it all hang out!
Ed Sheeran referred to the lawsuit as 'damaging' and 'baseless'
It's not over until Ed Sheeran (aka Teddy) sings!
Following the courtroom victory, Sheeran minced no words about the stress that he and his co-writers had experienced due to the lawsuit. "I wanted to make a small video to talk about it a bit because I've not really been able to say anything whilst it's been going on," he began in a video posted to his Instagram (via E! News). "Whilst we're obviously happy with the result, I feel like claims like this [are] way too common now and have become a culture where a claim is made with the idea that settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court, even if there's no basis for the claim," he explained. "It's really damaging to the songwriting industry," Sheeran continued. "There's only so many nights and very few chords used in pop music. Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released every day on Spotify," he noted.
While Sheeran was adamant that he did not "want to take anything away from the pain and hurt suffered from both sides of this case," he wanted to dispel any notions that he was merely an entity. "I'm not a corporation. I'm a human being. I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a son." He then wrapped the lengthy video by saying that he hoped "future baseless claims like this can be avoided." And scene!