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Verdict over Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’ copyright case

The ruling has come in on his 2017 hit.
7 April 2022 4:41PM

Ed Sheeran has been in a legal battle with Sami Chokri, a grime artist who performs under the name Sami Switch, over Ed’s hit ‘Shape Of You’. 

Sheeran was accused of copying the hook from Chokri’s 2015 song ‘Oh Why’. 
Take a listen to the two below… 

But it’s official, the ruling has come in and the British singer has won the copyright case at the High Court in London. 

‘Shape Of You’ became the best-selling digital song worldwide in 2017 and has collected over 5.6 billion views on YouTube to date.

Ed has assured us all that he always credits other artists when sampling work, and told the court he had never heard the Oh Why song he was accused of ripping off.

Following the court ruling, Ed gave a personal statement to all his social media, sharing that "We won and I wanted to share a few words about it all."

"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 a settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court, even if there's no base for the claim," he said. "It's really damaging to the songwriting industry.

"There's only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music. Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released every day on Spotify. That's 22 million songs a year and there's only 12 notes that are available."

"Lawsuits are not a pleasant experience and I hope with this ruling, it means in the future baseless claims like this can be avoided. This really does have to end."

He concluded by thanking people for their support, adding: "Hopefully, we can all get back to writing songs rather than having to prove that we can write them."

Source: 7News