{"id":2446040,"date":"2019-07-05T12:05:27","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T18:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=855803"},"modified":"2019-07-05T12:05:27","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T18:05:27","slug":"a-plagiarism-lawsuit-against-ed-sheeran-depends-on-one-against-led-zeppelin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/music-news\/a-plagiarism-lawsuit-against-ed-sheeran-depends-on-one-against-led-zeppelin\/","title":{"rendered":"A Plagiarism Lawsuit Against Ed Sheeran Depends on One Against Led Zeppelin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In music, the two most high-profile court cases are the copyright infringement lawsuits against Ed Sheeran<\/a> and Led Zeppelin<\/a> \u2014 and now the outcome of the former is being tied to that of the latter.<\/p>\n

A Manhattan judge canceled a scheduled September jury trial for the  case against Ed Sheeran\u2019s \u201cThinking Out Loud\u201d<\/a> this week, saying he wants to wait for the resolution of a case against Led Zeppelin\u2019s \u201cStairway to Heaven.\u201d<\/a> The heirs of Ed Townsend sued Sheeran in 2016, alleging that the singer-songwriter\u2019s 2014 \u201cThinking Out Loud\u201d lifted major harmonic progressions and rhythmic elements from Marvin Gaye\u2019s 1973 \u201cLet\u2019s Get It On,\u201d which Townsend co-wrote. Led Zeppelin, meanwhile, has been embroiled in a years-long case brought by Californian band Spirit, which claims the famous opening of \u201cStairway to Heaven\u201d rips off its 1968 track \u201cTaurus.\u201d While the two cases have no personnel in common, their similarities in nature and timeline, not to mention level of visibility, are causing the pause.<\/p>\n

The judge in the Townsend-Sheeran case, Louis Staton, said this week that the two parties should \u201ctake the summer off!\u201d and that he will summon them after the Spirit-Zeppelin case is decided, according to<\/span> Law360<\/a>. If \u201cStairway to Heaven\u201d \u2014 which is due for a rehearing in September after being tossed through years of flip-flopping decisions<\/a> \u2014 makes it to the U.S. Supreme Court, it means the \u201cThinking Out Loud\u201d case could be postponed until well into 2020.<\/p>\n

Music plagiarism cases are notoriously finicky, often dragging on for years and yielding seemingly arbitrary results. While Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams had to shell out nearly $5 million in a settlement<\/a> to the estate of Marvin Gaye in 2018 over their 2013 song \u201cBlurred Lines,\u201d a number of smaller-scale attempts on other big songs have been unsuccessful, and even the Spirit-Zepp case was deemed dead in the water<\/a> by a jury three years ago. (It was revived on appeal, and a new court said the prior jury had a \u201cmisunderstanding\u201d of copyright law.)<\/p>\n

All that is to say that there are myriad ways \u201cThinking Out Loud\u201d could go at this point. Sheeran last settled a lawsuit over another one of his hits, \u201cPhotograph,\u201d for $20 million in 2017.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In music, the two most high-profile court cases are the copyright infringement lawsuits against Ed Sheeran and Led Zeppelin \u2014 and now the outcome of the former is being tied to that of the latter. A Manhattan judge canceled a scheduled September jury trial for the  case against Ed Sheeran\u2019s \u201cThinking Out Loud\u201d this week, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2446040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-22 01:21:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446040\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}