Ed Sheeran wins copyright case over Marvin Gaye song

Ed Sheeran has won the copyright case over whether or not his song "Thinking Out Loud" infringes upon Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On." It's been the music industry's highest-profile copyright case in years, and many watching the case have said that a loss for Sheeran could pose a threat to creative freedom. The New York Times reports:

Over two weeks in a downtown Manhattan courtroom, Mr. Sheeran, one of music’s biggest global hitmakers, testified — often with a guitar in hand — that “Thinking Out Loud” had been created independently one evening with his friend and longtime collaborator Amy Wadge. The song was inspired, he said, by the decades-long loves that he and Ms. Wadge observed among elders in their families.
The two tracks share a similar syncopated chord pattern that the family of Ed Townsend, Gaye’s co-writer, which filed the suit, called the “heart” of “Let’s Get It On.” Mr. Sheeran and his lawyers never denied that the chords in the two songs are similar, but called them commonplace musical building blocks that have turned up in dozens of other songs.
The jury, which deliberated for around three hours, found that Mr. Sheeran had created the song independently. When the verdict was read shortly after 1 p.m., Mr. Sheeran stood in court and hugged his lawyers.