Jury finds Ed Sheeran didn't plagiarize Marvin Gaye's 'Let's Get It On' for his 2014 hit 'Thinking Out Loud'

• A jury found Ed Sheeran's hit "Thinking Out Loud" doesn't infringe on the copyright of "Let's Get It On."
• A Manhattan jury returned the verdict around 1 p.m. Thursday.

A jury in Manhattan on Thursday found that Ed Sheeran did not plagiarize Marvin Gaye's 1973 soul classic, "Let's Get It On," when he wrote his own hit, "Thinking Out Loud," forty years later.

The heirs of Ed Townsend, the co-composer of Gaye's hit, had accused Sheeran in a federal lawsuit of stealing a four-chord progression and the general shape of some melodies from the song.

"I am just a guy with a guitar who loves writing music for people to enjoy," Sheeran told reporters in a statement after his victory.

"I am not and will never allow myself to be a piggy bank for anyone to shake."

Townsend's family — including his only heir, daughter Kathryn Townsend-Griffin, his sister Helen McDonald, and the estate of his late wife, Cherrigale — first filed the lawsuit in 2017. They wanted to prevent Sheeran from ever recording or performing "Thinking Out Loud" again.

The lawsuit also sought money damages, estimated to be in the millions, from the artist, his label, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Publishing.

Sheeran's defense argued that both songs' chord progressions, and the rhythm the chords are played in — essentially the songs' "groove" — are common to many other pop songs, including some written and recorded well before "Let's Get It On."

Sheeran himself testified in the trial, often with a small accoustic touring guitar in hand.

He told jurors that the notes in his chord progression were slightly different, and that his melody was entirely different, from those in "Let's Get It On."

Both songs, he said after Thursday's victory, are built using commonplace harmonic rhythms and progressions of chords.

"These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before "Let's Get It On" was written and will be used to make music long after we are gone," he told reporters.

"They are a songwriter's 'alphabet,' our tool kit, and should be there for all of us to use. No one owns them, or the way they are played, in the same way nobody owns the color blue."

The trial was filled with live and recorded music, offered both as exhibits and testimony.

At one point, many in the courtroom laughed as Sheeran's expert musicologist played a computer-generated rendition of "Let's Get It On." The rendition isolated the Gaye hit's melody and chords — and featured a high-pitched robotic voice crooning, "Giving yourself to me can never be wrong."

Ben Crump, a lawyer for Townsend's family, had argued that Sheeran performing a mash-up of "Thinking Out Loud" and "Let's Get it On" during a concert in Zurich, Switzerland was the "smoking gun" that proved the British singer-songwriter had knowingly plagiarized Gaye's hit.

But Sheeran told jurors that many, many songs share a basic chord structure and can be sung over the same progression.

"If I had done what you're accusing me of doing I'd be quite an idiot to stand on stage in front of 25,000 people," he testified.

He also told jurors that if he loses, he'll be "done" with writing music. It's a promise Sheeran referred to first thing when he approached the mic stand outside federal court, moments after his win.

"I am obviously very happy with the outcome of the case," he told reporters. "And it looks like I'm not going to have to retire from my day job after all."

This copyright infringement trial isn't Sheeran's first — he won a $1.1 million lawsuit last year after UK singer Sami Switch accused Sheeran's "Shape of You" song of plagiarizing from Switch's 2015 song "Oh Why," according to Billboard.

Gaye's music has also been the subject of similar cases in the past. In 2015, Gaye's heirs won their lawsuit against Pharrell and Robin Thicke, whose song "Blurred Lines" was found to be plagiarized from Gaye's "Got to Give it Up."