The lawsuit, brought by Structured Asset Sales LLC, investment banker David Pullman’s company that owns one-third of the copyright to “Let’s Get It On,” is connected to a previous lawsuit Sheeran won earlier this month against the family of Gaye’s co-writer Edward Townsend. In the Townsend family suit, a jury at trial in the same Manhattan federal court found Sheeran independently created “Thinking out Loud” and so did not infringe on the copyright of “Let’s Get It On.
“It is an unassailable reality that the chord progression and harmonic rhythm in ‘Let’s Get It On’ are so commonplace, in isolation and in combination, that to protect their combination would give ‘Let’s Get It On’ an impermissible monopoly over a basic musical building block.” Sheeran’s co-writer Amy Wadge and other companies involved in the publication, distribution and copyright of “Thinking Out Loud” were also named defendants in the suit.