Ed Sheeran awarded £900,000+ costs following win in Shape Of You song-theft case
Ed Sheeran and his ‘Shape Of You’ co-writers have been awarded more than £900,000 in legal costs following their win in the headline-grabbing song-theft case in the London high court in relation to that work.Sheeran and his collaborators Johnny McDaid and Steven McCutcheon were accused of ripping off the earlier track ‘Oh Why’, by singer Sami Chokri, when they wrote ‘Shape Of You’ in autumn 2016. The allegations were mainly based on a musical segment shared by the two songs, in which Chokri’s lyrics went “oh why, oh why, oh why, oh”, while Sheeran sang “oh I, oh I, oh I, oh I”.Chokri reckoned that Sheeran had got a copy of his track via mutual contacts in the music industry, while his legal team argued that the similarities between the two songs were so striking that it was “highly improbable” they’d been independently created.But the Sheeran side countered that there was no firm evidence at all that the star had had access to Chokri’s work, while – they insisted – the musical segment shared by the two songs was commonplace in pop music,In the end the judge hearing the case, Antony Zacaroli, ruled very much in Sheeran’s favour.