Court Asked to Reconsider Ed Sheeran’s Legal Victory Over ‘Thinking Out Loud’
Despite Ed Sheeran’s victories in court last year, in which he successfully defended himself against accusations that his hit song Thinking Out Loud copied Marvin Gaye’s iconic Let’s Get It On, one of the cases may be revisited by the courts.
The owner of part of the rights to Let’s Get It On is now asking an appeals court to overturn one of the 2023 rulings, arguing that a recent Supreme Court decision renders the earlier decision in the case outdated.
Last summer, Sheeran won two lawsuits in a New York federal court, both accusing him of infringing on Let’s Get It On. One lawsuit was brought by Structured Asset Sales (SAS), a company founded by David Pullman, who is known for pioneering music-backed bonds. SAS holds partial publishing rights to the Gaye hit.
In May 2023, U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton dismissed SAS’s case, reversing an earlier decision to bring it to trial. This ruling followed a jury’s decision, in a separate trial presided over by Judge Stanton, that concluded Thinking Out Loud did not infringe Let’s Get It On’s copyright. SAS appealed this decision, arguing that Judge Stanton had made an error by barring its musicology experts from testifying and relying instead on the “deposit copy” of the song filed with the U.S. Copyright Office.
Until 1978, the Copyright Office required only sheet music for song registrations, not sound recordings. Let’s Get It On, released in 1973, was registered with sheet music that did not include the bass line that SAS claims Sheeran copied in Thinking Out Loud. SAS had planned to bring in experts to argue that musicians would interpret the sheet music to include the bass line similar to the one in Gaye’s song.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected SAS’s argument, siding with the U.S. Copyright Office’s stance that only those elements of a song included in the deposit copy are protected under copyright law. This interpretation is in line with the 1984 Supreme Court ruling in Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which established that courts should defer to government agencies’ reasonable interpretations of the law.
However, a controversial Supreme Court ruling in Loper Bright v. Raimondo this past summer overturned the Chevron principle, asserting that courts are not bound to automatically accept government agencies’ interpretations of the law.
SAS’s legal team now argues that this change in the law could invalidate the previous appellate court decision, asserting that the Copyright Act of 1909 does not mandate that sheet music be the only accepted deposit copy for musical compositions.
In their petition for appeal, SAS’s lawyers emphasize the critical importance of this issue, not just for their case against Sheeran, but for legacy songwriters and musicians whose works were registered with sheet music before 1978. They argue that the ruling on the “deposit copy” question is crucial for thousands of songwriters and artists whose songs, including some of the most influential in music history, may not be fully protected under copyright laws if sheet music alone is considered the sole determinant of protection.
SAS is requesting an en banc hearing, meaning that all the judges of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals would hear the case. These hearings are granted only in cases of significant legal importance or where there is conflicting rulings between courts.
The outcome of this appeal could have wide-reaching implications for the music industry, particularly for older works that were registered under outdated Copyright Office policies.