Ed Sheeran wins court after being accused of plagiarizing Shape of You

British singer Ed Sheeran has won a battle in high court that was studying if he plagiarised a phrase from a song by Sami Chokri. Judge resolved that Sheeran ‘neither deliberately nor subconsciously’ copied a phrase and put it in his most streamed song Shape of You.

A month ago Sheeran and his crew were accused of stealing phrases from the 2015 song Oh Why by Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue.

On Wednesday, Mr Justice Zacaroli said that the singer “neither deliberately nor subconsciously” took a phrase from Oh Why.

The judge admitted that there were “similarities” between "Oh Why" and "Oh I" in Shape of You, yet the phrases had significant differences.

Sheeran reacted to this ruling in his social media account. 

“Claims like this are way too common now and have become a culture where a claim is made with the idea that a settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court, even if there is no basis for the claim, and it’s really damaging to the songwriting industryThere are only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music and coincidences are bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released a day on Spotify, that is 22m songs a year, and there are only 12 notes that are available,” he said.