Ed Sheeran cuts deal over $20m ‘Photograph’ lawsuit

Ed Sheeran has cut a deal to end a US$20 million copyright infringement claim over one of his best-known songs, Photograph.

Songwriters Thomas Leonard and Martin Harrington accused him of copying “note for note” from their 2009 song Amazing, which had been a single for Matt Cardle, who won The X Factor in 2012. It reached #88 in the UK.

Details of the settlement have not been revealed.

Harrington – who has written hits for Kylie Minogue, 5ive and Emma Bunton – and Leonard took action in Los Angeles last July

They claimed, “This copying is, in many instances, verbatim, note-for-note copying, makes up nearly one half of Photograph, and raises this case to the unusual level of strikingly similar copying.”

They also submitted to the court the song sheets of both songs, claiming both shared 39 identical notes, with similarities “instantly recognisable to the ordinary observer”.

Harrington and Leonard hired as their lawyer Richard Busch, who represented the family of Marvin Gaye in 2015, winning them a $7.4 million settlement from Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over their chart topper Blurred Lines.

Photograph was released in May 2015 from his second album x (Multiply). It quickly clocked up double platinum in Australia, and went to #10 in the US and #15 in the UK where it was last month certified double platinum for sales of 1.2 million.

It was also double platinum in Canada, and platinum in New Zealand and Italy.

Its video notched up 300 million views on YouTube alone.

In April 2015, Spotify ranked the mellow song as the 18th most streamed track worldwide under the category “sleep”.

Photograph was used in the soundtrack of the movie Me Before You. In March 2015, Sheeran allowed the English county of Warwickshire to use it free of charge for a video campaign on child sexual exploitation.

According to Sheeran, the song developed from a piano loop from Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid, who is also listed as a co-writer. He tried recording the song with a number of producers, before asking Jeff Bhasker; who worked on it for a couple of months.

Photograph was written about Sheeran trying to keep together a long-distance relationship with his then-girlfriend while he was away on tour.

Coincidentally, he’s currently on a UK stadium tour. His booking agent Jon Ollier of CAA told Music Week, “It has been absolutely off the scale. In the UK alone, five million people tried to buy tickets, which is unprecedented.”