Ed Sheeran Faces Legal Battle in Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’ Copyright Lawsuit

The court­room bat­tle between Ed Sheer­an and the estate of Ed Townsend, co-writer of Mar­vin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” has final­ly begun. The Town­shend fam­i­ly claims that Sheer­an’s hit song “Think­ing Out Loud” infringes on the copy­right of the 1973 soul clas­sic, cit­ing “com­mon ele­ments” between the two songs.

The case, which has been in the works since 2017, will focus on the raw ele­ments of melody, har­mo­ny, and rhythm that make up the com­po­si­tion of “Let’s Get It On,” as record­ed in sheet music reg­is­tered with the US Patent and Trade­mark Office. Sheer­an’s lawyers argue that the sim­i­lar­i­ties between the two songs are based on the foun­da­tions of pop­u­lar music and a shared chord pro­gres­sion that is freely avail­able to all songwriters.

Sheer­an, who is expect­ed to tes­ti­fy in the case, was not present dur­ing jury selec­tion but is set to appear in court on Tues­day. The tri­al is expect­ed to last up to two weeks.

The case has already gar­nered atten­tion as “Let’s Get It On” is a beloved clas­sic that has been used in count­less movies and com­mer­cials, while “Think­ing Out Loud” won a Gram­my Award for Song of the Year. The suc­cess of the law­suit could poten­tial­ly affect oth­er artists, as it fol­lows a sim­i­lar copy­right case involv­ing Gaye’s estate and Robin Thicke, Phar­rell Williams, and T.I. in 2015.

Dur­ing the tri­al, the Town­shend fam­i­ly’s lawyers attempt­ed to show jurors a YouTube video of one of Sheer­an’s per­for­mances, but the judge denied their request to include it. A jury pre­vi­ous­ly award­ed the fam­i­ly $7.4 mil­lion in dam­ages, which the judge lat­er reduced to $5.3 million.