Ed Sheeran wins ‘Shape of You’ copyright battle, lashes out at ‘baseless claims’

Ed Sheeran recently won a High Court case against a grime artist over his song Shape of You.

A judge ruled on Wednesday that the Perfect hit-maker had not plagiarized the 2015 song Oh Why by Sami Chokri.

Chokri, a grime artist who performs under the name Sami Switch, previously claimed the Oh I hook in Sheeran's track was "strikingly similar" to an "Oh why refrain in his own track.

After the ruling, the Shivers crooner took to his Instagram handle to share the big news with his 37.7 million followers and said such "baseless" claims "are way too common".

In a video on social media, he said there was now a culture "where a claim is made with the idea that a settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court, even if there's no basis for the claim".

He added: "It's really damaging to the songwriting industry. There's only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music.

"Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released every day on Spotify. That's 22 million songs a year and there's only 12 notes that are available."

To note, Shape of You was the UK's best-selling song of 2017 in the UK and is Spotify's most-streamed ever.

Judge Antony Zacaroli ruled that Sheeran had "neither deliberately nor subconsciously copied" Chokri's song.

He acknowledged there were "similarities between the one-bar phrase" in Shape of You and Oh Why, but said "such similarities are only a starting point for a possible infringement" of copyright.

After studying the musical elements, he said there were "differences between the relevant parts" of the songs, which "provide compelling evidence that the 'Oh I' phrase" in Sheeran's song "originated from sources other than Oh Why".