In past days, composer and singer Ed Sheeran won a UK High Court copyright battle initiated by musician Sami Chokri, who claimed that Sheeran’s 2017 hit ‘Shape of You’ included a “strikingly similar” hook to his 2015 song ‘Oh Why’.
The honorable Justice in charge of this case ruled that Sheeran had not copied Chokri’s song and determined that even though there were some similarities between the disputed phrases, differences between the other relevant parts of the songs provided compelling evidence that the “Oh I” hook in Sheeran’s song originated from sources other than ‘Oh Why’.
Sheeran’s case was resolved days apart from a copyright appeal case won by Katy Perry, whose attorneys managed to convince a US court of appeals to refuse the reinsertion of the original verdict that forced Perry to pay USD $2.8 million to artist Marcus Gray (a.k.a. Flame), who in previous stages alleged that the pop singer copied his track ‘Joyful Noise’ to create her hit song ‘Dark Horse’
Both cases were resolved based mainly on one determinative argument since both defendants (Sheeran and Perry) proved that the similarities in the confronted songs were originated purely out of coincidence, since the resemblance at issue consisted entirely of ordinary and common musical elements, and the similarities between them did not arise out of an original combination of these elements.
Sheeran argued: “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 are only 12 notes that are available”, while Perry’s case Court determined that “Allowing a copyright over this material would essentially amount to allowing an improper monopoly over two-note pitch sequences or even the minor scale itself, especially in light of the limited number of expressive choices available when it comes to an eight-note repeated musical figure.”
Another determining point, at least for Sheeran’s case,
