The award-winning singer is in a legal battle with grime artist Sami Chokri and producer Ross O’Donoghue.
British singer Ed Sheeran is in court over a copyright suit for his globally popular song “Shape of You.”
Reuters reports that Ed Sheeran denied that he simply altered other artists’ music and words to pass their work off as his own as he gave evidence on Monday in a copyright trial over his 2017 chart-topping hit “Shape Of You”.
The award-winning singer is in a legal battle with grime artist Sami Chokri, who performs as Sami Switch, and music producer Ross O’Donoghue, who argue “Shape of You” infringes “particular lines and phrases” from their 2015 song “Oh Why”.
“I have already built a long and very successful career writing original songs for both myself and a wide range of other leading artists,” Sheeran said in his witness statement. “I would not have been able to do that if I was in the habit of plagiarising other writers.”
This isn’t the first time Sheeran has been in trouble over copyright claims. Sheeran previously faced claims over his 2015 hit “Photograph”; he settled the matter out of court and agreed to hand over 35% of the publishing revenues, recognised the musicians as co-writers, and paid more than $5 million to them.
“Shape of You” currently has 5.6 Billion views on YouTube.
