The yearslong legal battle over Ed Sheeran‘s “Thinking Out Loud” has officially drawn to a close.
The heirs of Ed Townsend, co-writer on Marvin Gaye‘s “Let’s Get It On”, who sued Sheeran in 2016 for allegedly infringing the classic song in his smash 2014 single, have officially dropped their appeal in the long-running case, according to court documents filed last Wednesday (Sept. 20). The appeal was withdrawn with prejudice, meaning the Townsend heirs cannot refile the case at a later date; the filing does not provide a reasoning for their decision.
The development comes nearly five months after Sheeran won a jury verdict that his song did not infringe Gaye’s, and nearly four months after his accusers launched their appeal. In their original lawsuit, Kathryn Townsend Griffin and other Townsend heirs alleged that Sheeran had “knowingly and intentionally infringed” the 1973 hit and, in their words, stole the “heart” from the track, one of the most “instantly recognizable songs in R&B history.”
One key piece of evidence in the case was a video of a 2014 concert given by Sheeran, during which the singer effectively acknowledged that the two songs were similar by toggling between them on stage. But his lawyers contended that the tunes merely share commonplace musical building blocks that, in their words, cannot be “monopolized” under copyright law.
Following a dragged-out legal process, in April the case finally made it to trial, when lawyers for the Townsends played the concert clip in question and called it a “smoking gun.” At one point, Sheeran himself took the stand and put on a brief guitar performance to bolster his case by demonstrating how his song was written.
Jurors ultimately sided with Sheeran in a verdict handed down May 4, finding that he and his co-writer, Amy Wadge, had independently written “Thinking Out Loud.” Had the Townsends prevailed, Sheeran faced paying potentially millions of dollars in damages. Such a verdict would also have had broader implications for the music industry, potentially causing music creators to become more cautious about creating songs that sounded similar to older music.
