Ed Sheeran wins Shape of You copyright case and hits out at 'baseless' claims

Ed Sheeran has won a High Court copyright battle over his 2017 hit Shape of You.

A judge ruled on Wednesday that the singer-songwriter had not plagiarised the 2015 song Oh Why by Sami Chokri.

Chokri, a grime artist who performs under the name Sami Switch, had claimed the "Oh I" hook in Sheeran's track was "strikingly similar" to an "Oh why" refrain in his track.

After the ruling, Sheeran said such "baseless" claims "are way too common".

In a video on social media, he said there was now a culture "where a claim is made with the idea that a settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court, even if there's no basis for the claim".

He added: "It's damaging to the songwriting industry. There are only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music.

"Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released every day on Spotify. That's 22 million songs a year and there are only 12 available notes."

Shape of You was the UK's best-selling song of 2017 in the UK and is Spotify's most-streamed ever.

Judge Antony Zacaroli ruled that Sheeran had "neither deliberately nor subconsciously copied" Chokri's song.

He acknowledged there were "similarities between the one-bar phrase" in Shape of You and Oh Why, but said "such similarities are only a starting point for a possible infringement" of copyright.

After studying the musical elements, he said there were "differences between the relevant parts" of the songs, which "provide compelling evidence that the 'Oh I' phrase" in Sheeran's song "originated from sources other than Oh Why"