Ed Sheeran Blasts ‘Dangerous’ Copyright Cases After Jury Victory: I Won’t Be a ‘Piggy Bank for Anyone to Shake’

Musician Ed Sheeran expressed a mixture of relief and frustration after a jury verdict in his favor in a copyright infringement case, telling reporters that if he had lost, it would have been “dangerous” to music creators everywhere.

The lawsuit accused Sheeran’s 2014 hit song “Thinking Out Loud” of having similarities with some of the chord progressions, melodies, and rhythms in Marvin Gaye’s 1973 classic tune “Let’s Get It On.” The complaint was filed by the family of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the song with Gaye.

Sheeran attended the trial in New York City and testified in defense of his song, which he wrote with his frequent collaborator, singer-songwriter Amy Wadge, pointing out that both songs were based on chord progressions that were very common in pop music.

On Thursday, a jury returned a verdict in their favor, finding that “Thinking Out Loud” did not infringe Gaye and Townsend’s copyright in their song.

Speaking to the press shortly after the verdict, Sheeran said he was “obviously very happy with the outcome of the case,” and quipped “it looks like I’m not having to retire from my day job after all.”

“At the same time, I’m unbelievably frustrated that baseless claims like this are allowed to go to court at all,” Sheeran continued, describing how this case had taken “eight years” of “talking about two songs with dramatically different lyrics, melodies, and four chords which are also different and used by song writers every day, all over the world.”

He continued, pointing out the impact on songwriters. “These chords are common building blocks which are used to create music, long before ‘Let’s Get It On’ was written, and will be used to make music long after we are all gone. They are in a songwriter’s alphabet, our tool kit, and should be there for all of us to use. No one owns them, or the way they are played, in the same way that nobody owns the color blue.”

Sheeran blasted the opposing counsel for making “unfounded claims” with their experts who had “left out words and notes” to create “misleading comparisons and disinformation” and “tried to manipulate my song to try and convince the jury that they had a genuine claim.”

He expressed how he was “grateful” the jury “saw through the attempted manipulation, and called such cases “so dangerous,” both for songwriters facing this kind of litigation threat and potential claimants “who may be convinced to bring a bogus claim.”

It had been “devastating” for him and Wadge to have been “accused of stealing someone else’s song when we put so much work into our livelihoods.”

“I’m just a guy with a guitar who loves writing music for people to enjoy,” he emphasized. “I am not and will never allow myself to be a piggy bank for anyone to shake.”

Having to be in New York for the trial took a “significant toll,” said Sheeran, mentioning time he missed with his family and his grandmother’s funeral in Ireland. “I will never get that time back.”

It was time to “bring back common sense,” Sheeran concluded, “These claims need to be stopped so the creative process can carry on and we can go back to making music. And at the same time, we absolutely need trusted individuals, real experts, who help support the process of protecting copyright.”

Watch above via CNN.