{"id":6530,"date":"2025-06-16T16:37:06","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T16:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/ed-sheeran-lawsuit-over-lets-get-it-on-rejected-by-supreme-court\/"},"modified":"2025-06-16T16:37:06","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T16:37:06","slug":"ed-sheeran-lawsuit-over-lets-get-it-on-rejected-by-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/ed-sheeran-lawsuit-over-lets-get-it-on-rejected-by-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Sheeran Lawsuit Over ‘Let\u2019s Get It On’ Rejected By Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tE<\/span>d Sheeran\u2019s next tour isn\u2019t going to include a stop at the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an order issued Monday, the high court refused to revive a long-running lawsuit that claimed Sheeran\u2019s 2014 hit \u201cThinking Out Loud\u201d infringed Marvin Gaye\u2018s famed 1973 jam \u201cLet\u2019s Get It On.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe star\u2019s legal accuser \u2014 a company that owns a partial stake in Gaye\u2019s 1973 song \u2014 had asked the justices to hear the case, which was dismissed in November by a lower court that ruled the two tracks share only basic \u201cmusical building blocks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the justices denied that request on Monday, allowing that earlier ruling to stand. As is typical, the Supreme Court did not offer any explanation for why it had refused to hear the case. The high court hears only a tiny fraction of the cases it receives.<\/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.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe was first sued by the daughter of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the famed 1973 tune with Gaye \u2013 a case that ended with a high-profile jury verdict clearing Sheeran. He was then hit with a separate case by Structured Asset Sales (SAS), an entity owned by industry executive David Pullman that controls a different stake in Townsend\u2019s copyrights to the legendary song.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat 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 \u2014 ubiquitous in pop music \u2014 even 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\tIn a petition to the Supreme Court in March, SAS argued that the earlier ruling had unfairly restricted the case to written sheet music rather than Gaye\u2019s iconic recorded version. It claimed that problem would impact \u201cthe rights of thousands of legacy musical composers and artists, of many of the most beloved and enduring pieces of popular music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in a response filing last month, Sheeran\u2019s lawyers said SAS was using a \u201cfalse premise\u201d and \u201cbaseless assertions\u201d to try to get the justices to revive the case: \u201cThe petition should be denied.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMonday\u2019s denial will finally end SAS\u2019s lawsuit against Sheeran, but the pop star not quite out of the legal woods just yet. Pullman\u2019s company later filed a second, more novel case in which it is seeking to sue Sheeran over the more detailed recorded version of Gaye\u2019s song; that case has been paused for years while the earlier lawsuit plays out.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement to Billboard<\/em> on Monday, Pullman said that separate case \u201cwill now go forward\u201d in federal court: \u201cDefendants fear has always been the sound recording of \u2018Let\u2019s Get It On\u2019,\u201d Pullman said. \u201cThe U.S. Supreme Court was aware of this and understands that the case will go forward and may very well be back at the U.S. Supreme Court at a later date.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his own statement Monday, Sheeran\u2019s attorney Donald Zakarin<\/strong> praised the justices for rejecting a \u201cfalse narrative\u201d aimed at reviving the case. And he strongly dismissed Pullman\u2019s statements about the remaining case against Sheeran, stressing that a jury found the star had independently created \u201cThinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPullman\u2019s completely unauthorized and improper purported registration of the Marvin Gaye recording of \u2018Let\u2019s Get It On,\u2019 50 years after it was created, will not change that fact,\u201d Zakarin said.\u00a0\u201cIf he truly believed that the second case he filed was so compelling \u2013 which it is not \u2013 he would not have spent the last two years pursuing his failed first case.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ed Sheeran\u2019s next tour isn\u2019t going to include a stop at the U.S. Supreme Court. In an order issued Monday, the high court refused to revive a long-running […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[143,303,4000,2993,3999,533],"class_list":["post-6530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-court","tag-lawsuit","tag-lets","tag-rejected","tag-sheeran","tag-supreme"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6530","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=6530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}