Federal judge dismisses another lawsuit against Ed Sheeran in the legal battle over ‘Thinking Out Loud’

By Lauren del Valle, CNN

(CNN) — In a second legal victory for Ed Sheeran this month, a federal district judge dismissed another lawsuit that claimed Sheeran’s hit “Thinking Out Loud” copied the 1973 Marvin Gaye hit “Let’s Get It On.”

The lawsuit, brought by Structured Asset Sales LLC, investment banker David Pullman’s company that owns one-third of the copyright to “Let’s Get It On,” is connected to a previous lawsuit Sheeran won earlier this month against the family of Gaye’s co-writer Edward Townsend.

In the Townsend family suit, a jury at trial in the same Manhattan federal court found Sheeran independently created “Thinking out Loud” and so did not infringe on the copyright of “Let’s Get It On.”

The SAS lawsuit similarly alleges “Thinking Out Loud” copies elements of “Let’s Get it On.”

Federal District Judge Lewis Stanton, the presiding judge in both cases, dismissed the SAS case Wednesday in a written ruling that said the combination of the chord progression and harmonic rhythm of “Let’s Get It On” is “too commonplace to merit copyright protection.”

“The selection and arrangement of these two musical elements in ‘Let’s Get It On’ is now commonplace and thus their combination is unprotectable. If their combination were protected and not freely available to songwriters, the goal of copyright law ‘[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts’ would be thwarted,” Stanton wrote.

Judge Stanton also asserted that Sheeran did not infringe on the protected elements of “Let’s Get It On.”

“There is no genuine issue of material fact as to whether defendants infringed the protected elements of “Let’s Get It On.” The answer is that they did not,” the judge wrote.

“It is an unassailable reality that the chord progression and harmonic rhythm in ‘Let’s Get It On’ are so commonplace, in isolation and in combination, that to protect their combination would give ‘Let’s Get It On’ an impermissible monopoly over a basic musical building block.”

Sheeran’s co-writer Amy Wadge and other companies involved in the publication, distribution and copyright of “Thinking Out Loud” were also named defendants in the suit.

The suit was filed in 2018 after SAS unsuccessfully tried to join in as a plaintiff in the Townsend family’s suit.

Still, the legal battle over “Thinking Out Loud” is not over for Sheeran and his co-defendants.

SAS will appeal the ruling to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Pullman told CNN.

Representatives for Sheeran declined to comment on Stanton’s dismissal of the case.

Another lawsuit that splintered from the original SAS suit against Sheeran and his co-defendants is also still pending in Manhattan federal court.

Pullman is especially optimistic about that case, he told CNN, because if the case gets to trial, a jury will likely be able to consider the sound recording and the sheet music for “Let’s Get It On.”

A true recording of the Marvin Gaye hit was not admissible as evidence for the jury to consider in the most recent trial.

Jurors instead heard computer-generated clips of the song at issue in the suit.

Pullman says the sound recording of “Let’s Get It On” coupled with its sheet music, both of which are registered with the US Copyright Office, will prove their case against Sheeran.

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