Supreme Court Blocks Bid to Reopen "Thinking Out Loud" Copyright Lawsuit against Ed Sheeran

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a lawsuit against musician Ed Sheeran that alleged his hit single "Thinking Out Loud" copied Marvin Gaye's iconic song "Let's Get It On."

The Supreme Court justices declined to hear an appeal filed by Structured Asset Sales, a company owned by investment banker David Pullman, that owns a partial stake in Gaye’s 1973 song.

Structured Asset Sales first sued Sheeran, his record label Warner Music, and music publisher Sony Music Publishing in 2023, seeking monetary damages over alleged similarities between the two songs. 

A U.S. District Judge sided with Sheeran in the original case, concluding that the song’s melody, harmony, and rhythm were too common to require copyright protection. The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision last year.

In a separate 2023 copyright lawsuit over the same issue filed by the heirs of Ed Townsend, Gaye’s co-writer on the Motown classic, a jury in Manhattan federal court ruled in favor of Sheeran. 

Speaking outside the court at the time, Sheeran said: “We spent the past eight years talking about two songs with dramatically different lyrics, melodies and four chords which are also different and used by songwriters every day all over the world.”

He continued: “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 all gone. They are in a songwriter’s alphabet, our toolkit, 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 Let’s Get It On case followed another high-profile lawsuit by Gaye’s estate, in which Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were ordered to pay more than $5 million in 2018 after a court found that Thicke’s global smash "Blurred Lines" copied Gaye’s 1977 hit Got to Give It Up.