Ed Sheeran’s next tour isn’t 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 lawsuit that claimed Sheeran’s 2014 hit “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye‘s famed 1973 jam “Let’s Get It On.”
The star’s legal accuser — a company that owns a partial stake in Gaye’s 1973 song — 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 “musical building blocks.”
But 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.
Sheeran has faced multiple lawsuits over “Thinking,” 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 – 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’s 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 “a monopoly over a combination of two fundamental musical building blocks.”
“The four-chord progression at issue — ubiquitous in pop music — even coupled with a syncopated harmonic rhythm, is too well-explored to meet the originality threshold that copyright law demands,” the appeals court wrote. “Overprotecting such basic elements would threaten to stifle creativity and undermine the purpose of copyright law.”
In 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’s iconic recorded version. It claimed that problem would impact “the rights of thousands of legacy musical composers and artists, of many of the most beloved and enduring pieces of popular music.”
But in a response filing last month, Sheeran’s lawyers said SAS was using a “false premise” and “baseless assertions” to try to get the justices to revive the case: “The petition should be denied.”
Monday’s denial will finally end SAS’s lawsuit against Sheeran, but the pop star not quite out of the legal woods just yet. Pullman’s company later filed a second, more novel case in which it is seeking to sue Sheeran over the more detailed recorded version of Gaye’s song; that case has been paused for years while the earlier lawsuit plays out.
In a statement to Billboard on Monday, Pullman said that separate case “will now go forward” in federal court: “Defendants fear has always been the sound recording of ‘Let’s Get It On’,” Pullman said. “The 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.”
In his own statement Monday, Sheeran’s attorney Donald Zakarin praised the justices for rejecting a “false narrative” aimed at reviving the case. And he strongly dismissed Pullman’s statements about the remaining case against Sheeran, stressing that a jury found the star had independently created “Thinking.”
“Pullman’s completely unauthorized and improper purported registration of the Marvin Gaye recording of ‘Let’s Get It On,’ 50 years after it was created, will not change that fact,” Zakarin said. “If he truly believed that the second case he filed was so compelling – which it is not – he would not have spent the last two years pursuing his failed first case.”
