{"id":4616,"date":"2025-03-10T21:59:57","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T21:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/ed-sheeran-accusers-ask-supreme-court-to-tackle-lets-get-it-on-case\/"},"modified":"2025-03-10T21:59:57","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T21:59:57","slug":"ed-sheeran-accusers-ask-supreme-court-to-tackle-lets-get-it-on-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/ed-sheeran-accusers-ask-supreme-court-to-tackle-lets-get-it-on-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Sheeran Accusers Ask Supreme Court to Tackle \u2018Let\u2019s Get It On\u2019 Case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tT<\/span>he legal battle over whether Ed Sheeran<\/a>\u2019s \u201cThinking Out Loud\u201d infringed Marvin Gaye\u2018s \u201cLet\u2019s Get It On\u201d has reached the U.S. Supreme Court more than a decade after Sheeran\u2019s hit was released.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a petition filed last week, a company that owns a stake in the rights to Gaye\u2019s 1973 song urged the justices to overturn a November ruling by a lower appeals court, which said Sheeran had done nothing wrong and that the two tracks shared only \u201cfundamental musical building blocks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe company, Structured Asset Sales (SAS), says that the ruling unfairly restricted its allegations to written sheet music rather than all elements included in Gaye\u2019s iconic recorded version. That thorny issue, which has also cropped up in other major cases over \u201cBlurred Lines\u201d and \u201cStairway To Heaven\u201d in recent years, must finally be resolved by the high court, the company says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe rights of thousands of legacy musical composers and artists, of many of the most beloved and enduring pieces of popular music, are at the center of the controversy,\u201d SAS\u2019s lawyers write in the petition, filed with the high court Thursday (March 6).<\/p>\n

\n\tSuch an appeal, known as a petition for a writ of certiorari, faces long odds. The Supreme Court takes less than 2% of the roughly 7,000 cases it receives each year, hearing only the disputes it deems most important to the national legal landscape.<\/p>\n

\n\tSheeran has faced multiple lawsuits over \u201cThinking,\u201d a 2014 track co-written with Amy Wadge that reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and ultimately spent 58 weeks on the chart. He was first sued by the daughter of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the famed 1973 tune with Gaye. That case ended in a high-profile jury verdict that cleared Sheeran of any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\n\tThursday\u2019s petition came in a separate case filed by SAS, an entity owned by industry executive David Pullman<\/strong> that controls a different stake in Townsend\u2019s copyrights to the legendary song. That suit was rejected in November by the federal Second Circuit appeals court, which said the lawsuit was essentially seeking \u201ca monopoly over a combination of two fundamental musical building blocks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe four-chord progression at issue\u2014ubiquitous in pop music\u2014even coupled with a syncopated harmonic rhythm, is too well-explored to meet the originality threshold that copyright law demands,\u201d the appeals court wrote. \u201cOverprotecting such basic elements would threaten to stifle creativity and undermine the purpose of copyright law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAppealing that ruling to the Supreme Court last week, attorneys for SAS argued the lower court had botched the case by relying only on the \u201cdeposit copy\u201d \u2014 a bare-bones written version of music sent to the U.S. Copyright Office for many old songs. Doing so was not only legally erroneous but also out of step with reality, the company\u2019s lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNobody who understands the music industry would ever suggest that songwriters consult the deposit copies on file with the Copyright Office as part of their creative (or clearance) process,\u201d SAS wrote to the justices. \u201cTo the extent they are aware of the music that preceded them, it is from hearing it on the radio, in movies, television and\u2014for the last quarter century\u2014the Internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat ruling was even more legally problematic, SAS\u2019s lawyers write, because it came in the wake of a Supreme Court decision last year that said courts should afford less deference to legal guidance from federal agencies. By siding with Sheeran \u2014 and an agency interpretation from the Copyright Office \u2014 SAS says the lower appeals court \u201copenly defied this Court.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSheeran\u2019s attorneys can file a response brief in the weeks ahead. The court will decide whether or not to hear the case at some point in the next several months.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The legal battle over whether Ed Sheeran\u2019s \u201cThinking Out Loud\u201d infringed Marvin Gaye\u2018s \u201cLet\u2019s Get It On\u201d has reached the U.S. Supreme Court more than a decade after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2044,294,143,4000,3999,533,5021],"class_list":["post-4616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-accusers","tag-case","tag-court","tag-lets","tag-sheeran","tag-supreme","tag-tackle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}