{"id":6550,"date":"2025-06-18T01:48:22","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T01:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/ed-sheeran-lawsuit-smokey-robinson-case-taylor-swift-texts-more\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T01:48:22","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T01:48:22","slug":"ed-sheeran-lawsuit-smokey-robinson-case-taylor-swift-texts-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/ed-sheeran-lawsuit-smokey-robinson-case-taylor-swift-texts-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Sheeran Lawsuit, Smokey Robinson Case, Taylor Swift Texts & More"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tTHE BIG STORY: <\/strong>Years after it was first filed, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to revive a lawsuit claiming Ed 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 decision is the latest win for Sheeran in a nine-year legal odyssey over two songs that do, in fact, sound pretty similar to many listeners. Spin<\/em> described \u201cThinking\u201d as \u201can incredibly obvious successor\u201d to Gaye\u2019s song, and countless YouTube accounts mashed them up. Even Sheeran himself seemed to agree: In an infamous video clip, he was captured toggling between the two at a 2014 concert.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe was sued over those similarities in 2016 by the daughter of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the 1973 tune with Gaye, but that case ended with a high-profile jury verdict that said Sheeran and his co-writers had independently created their song. He was sued again in 2018 by Structured Asset Sales (SAS), an entity owned by industry executive David Pullman <\/strong>that controls a different stake in Townsend\u2019s copyrights. But in November, a federal appeals court tossed that case, too, ruling the songs share only basic \u201cmusical building blocks\u201d that all songwriters are free to use.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith Monday\u2019s move by SCOTUS, which will allow that decision to stand, is Sheeran\u2019s long copyright nightmare finally over? Not quite yet.<\/p>\n

\n\tBack in 2020, Pullman\u2019s company filed yet another <\/em>case over \u201cThinking\u201d \u2014 something of a creative gambit to get around shortcomings of the earlier lawsuits. A judge had ruled that Townsend\u2019s copyrights covered only the basic sheet music to \u201cLet\u2019s Get It On,\u201d and not Gaye\u2019s famous recorded version you\u2019ve heard countless times. So SAS\u2019s lawyers filed for an entirely new copyright on the recorded version and then sued Sheeran for infringing it.<\/p>\n

\n\tCan they do that? Unclear. The newer lawsuit has been paused for years while the earlier case played out in court, meaning a judge has not yet ruled on whether the get-a-new-copyright maneuver is legally viable in the first place. But after Monday\u2019s move by the Supreme Court, the case will now be reopened for action.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to Billboard<\/em> on Monday, each side previewed the battle ahead. Pullman said Sheeran and his co-defendants \u201cfear\u201d the sound recording and vowed that his newer case \u201cwill now go forward.\u201d Meanwhile, Sheeran\u2019s attorney, Donald Zakarin<\/strong>, stressed that his client had already been cleared by a jury of his peers.<\/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. \u201cIf he truly believed that the second case he filed was so compelling \u2014 which it is not \u2014 he would not have spent the last two years pursuing his failed first case.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019re reading\u00a0The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from\u00a0<\/em>Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between. To get the newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday,\u00a0go subscribe here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\tOther top stories this week\u2026\t<\/h3>\n

\n\tSMOKEY ROBINSON UPDATE<\/strong> \u2013 Facing a rape lawsuit from his former housekeepers, the Motown legend argued in new court filings that his accusers are trying to slow-walk the case to gain maximum leverage for an extortionate settlement payout, including by dealing a financial blow to his ongoing tour. His lawyers say attorneys for the housekeepers want to \u201clet the lawsuit linger publicly while the Robinsons have to live every day under the unfair specter of public opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIT NEVER ENDS <\/strong>\u2013 Amid their bruising legal battle over the movie It End With Us<\/em>, Blake Lively asked a federal judge to block Justin Baldoni\u2019s continued efforts to see her texts with Taylor Swift, arguing her nemesis shouldn\u2019t be allowed to drag the pop superstar into the court battle just to generate \u201csensational headlines.\u201d Separately in the same messy fight, Lively moved to subpoena music executive Scooter Braun<\/strong>, seeking to find out what the HYBE America boss knows about Baldoni\u2019s alleged smear campaign against her.<\/p>\n

\n\tDIDDY TRIAL CONTINUES<\/strong> \u2013 The sex-trafficking trial of Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs continued into a sixth week, as the prosecution nears the conclusion of its case. Week Five was dominated by testimony from \u201cJane,\u201d a former girlfriend who says the star coerced her into taking part in the \u201cfreak-off\u201d sex parties at the heart of the case \u2014 and by a brief moment where Ye (formerly Kanye West) stopped by the courthouse. Week Six kicked off with the judge dismissing a juror for giving inconsistent answers about where he lives \u2014 a ruling that rejected warnings by Combs\u2019 attorneys that the dispute was a \u201cthinly veiled effort to dismiss a Black juror.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMORE AI LAWSUITS<\/strong> \u2013 Artificial intelligence music startups Suno and Udio were hit with new copyright lawsuits \u2014 this time, proposed class actions on behalf of independent artists who have been \u201cleft without a seat at the table\u201d in the high-profile litigation filed by Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music. The cases, filed by a country singer named Tony Justice on behalf of \u201cthousands\u201d of indie artists, came weeks after news broke that the majors were negotiating potential settlements with the two tech firms that would see them license their music for AI training.<\/p>\n

\n\tMEGAN GAG ORDER<\/strong> \u2013 A federal judge issued a gag order in Megan Thee Stallion\u2019s defamation lawsuit against gossip blogger Milagro Gramz over the Tory Lanez shooting, barring both sides from talking about the case. The ruling cited warnings from the star\u2019s lawyers that Gramz\u2019s ongoing posts about Megan had sparked \u201cseverely critical and derogatory comments\u201d about the star that could potentially \u201cincite violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tR. KELLY WANTS OUT<\/strong> \u2013 The disgraced R&B star asked a federal judge to cut short his 30-plus-year sentence for racketeering, sexual abuse and child pornography, claiming jail officials tried to solicit a member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang to kill him. In later filings, Kelly\u2019s lawyers claimed he\u2019d been placed in solitary confinement as retaliation, and that he\u2019d been rushed to the hospital after officials gave him a lethal quantity of his medications. Prosecutors denied the allegations, calling them \u201cdeeply unserious\u201d and the \u201cbehavior of an abuser and a master manipulator\u201d on full display: \u201cThis court should not allow Kelly to turn its docket into a grocery store checkout aisle tabloid,\u201d prosecutors wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\t50 CENT HORROR FIGHT<\/strong> \u2013 The producers of SkillHouse<\/em>, a horror movie starring 50 Cent, responded to the rapper\u2019s recent lawsuit aimed at blocking its premiere next month, blasting the case as \u201ca baseless and last-minute shakedown.\u201d Fifty claims he never signed off on the movie and hasn\u2019t been paid, but the producers argued that they have \u201ca mountain of documentary evidence\u201d that he did, in fact, agree to appear in and promote the flick.<\/p>\n

\n\tDOXXING DISPUTE<\/strong> \u2013 A Los Angeles judge ruled that the hip-hop powerhouse Top Dawg Entertainment must face claims that the company \u201cdoxxed\u201d two women after they sued the record label for sexual harassment and assault. The judge refused to dismiss allegations that the company broke a newly enacted California law outlawing doxxing \u2014 revealing someone\u2019s identity non-consensually \u2014 by including the names of the two \u201cJane Doe\u201d accusers in a response statement that called the lawsuit a \u201cshakedown.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMANSLAUGHTER PLEA<\/strong> \u2013 The Atlanta rapper Silento, best known for his 2015 chart-topper \u201cWatch Me (Whip\/Nae Nae),\u201d was sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to fatally shooting his cousin in 2021. Facing a looming trial, the 27-year-old rapper avoided murder charges by admitting to voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, gun possession and concealing a death, crimes he said he\u2019d committed while mentally ill.<\/p>\n

\n\tTHE SARCASM DEFENSE <\/strong>\u2013 Karol G and UMG fired back at a copyright lawsuit claiming she lifted key elements of \u201cGat\u00fabela,\u201d a track on her chart-topping album Ma\u00f1ana Ser\u00e1 Bonito<\/em>, from an earlier song. In the filing, they denied claims that one of the song\u2019s producers effectively admitted to the theft in an Instagram comment \u2014 arguing that he posted it \u201csarcastically\u201d and that it clearly wasn\u2019t an admission of liability.<\/p>\n

\n\tTORTIOUS REUNION?<\/strong> M\u00fasica mexicana singer-songwriter Codiciado filed a lawsuit against his old record label, Rancho Humilde, and former bandmates in the ensemble Grupo Codiciado, claiming they stole his intellectual property by getting the band back together under the name Los Codicia2 after he went solo.<\/p>\n

\n\tDISCRIMINATION DEAL<\/strong> \u2013 Nas\u2019 record label and media company, Mass Appeal, inked a settlement with a white former executive, Melissa Cooper<\/strong>, who claimed that she was the target of discrimination and forced out because of her race. The deal, the terms of which were not disclosed, will resolve a lawsuit in which Cooper claimed that she had been subject to animosity because she was a \u201cwhite woman working in hip-hop.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPHOTO FIGHT<\/strong> \u2013 Robin Thicke was hit with a copyright lawsuit for allegedly posting paparazzi pictures of himself on Instagram without paying to license the images. The case, filed by celebrity photo agency BackGrid USA, is the latest in a string of such lawsuits over artists posting themselves to socials \u2014 cases that have targeted Jennifer Lopez, Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Justin Bieber and others.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE BIG STORY: Years after it was first filed, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to revive a lawsuit claiming Ed Sheeran\u2019s 2014 hit \u201cThinking Out Loud\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[294,303,5825,3999,5824,3029,3028,1546],"class_list":["post-6550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-case","tag-lawsuit","tag-robinson","tag-sheeran","tag-smokey","tag-swift","tag-taylor","tag-texts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6550","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=6550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}