Ed Sheeran has won his “Shape of You” copyright trial.
The singer had been accused of copying parts of his 2017 smash single from Sami Chokri’s 2015 track “Oh Why”.
Sheeran and his co-writers, Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid and producer Steven McCutcheon, had denied the claims made by Chokri and his co-writer Ross O’Donoghue.
On Wednesday (6 April) morning, Mr Justice Zacaroli cleared the singer of plagiarism after an 11-day trial at the High Court.
Chokri – who performs under the name Sami Switch – had claimed that Sheeran’s song took “particular lines and phrases” from his own.
He alleged that his refrain of the words “Oh I” was “strikingly similar” to Sheeran’s delivery of the words “Oh why”.
Mr Justice Zacaroli listened to both songs in court, with Chokri and O’Donoghue’s lawyer, Andrew Sutcliffe, telling him they “sound almost identical”.
However, on Wednesday, Mr Justice Zacaroli decided that Sheeran, McDaid and McCutcheon had not copied the song, saying that there was “insuffient” evidence of “deliberate” copying.
In legal documents obtained by The Independent, the judge wrote that while “there are similarities between the [‘Oh Why’] hook and the [‘Oh I’] phrase, there are also significant differences”.
“I conclude that Mr Sheeran had not heard ‘Oh Why’ and in any event that he did not deliberately copy the [‘Oh I’] phrase from the [‘Oh Why’] hook,” he wrote.
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