Ed Sheeran is standing firm against a lawsuit alleging that he stole the tune for the song 'The Rest of Our Life' which he wrote for Tim Mcgraw and Faith Hill. He was sued by the writers of the 2014 Jasmine Rae song 'When I Found You' back in January, but he's certainly not about to settle.

Ed Sheeran at the Brit AwardsEd Sheeran at the Brit Awards

This week, Ed dropped his own legal documents denying all claims that he copied the music without permission or that the tracks even have any similarities. He explains that he never sought permission from songwriters Sean Carey and Beau Golden because his work was an 'originally and independently created musical composition'.

It doesn't look like he's filing a counter-suit or anything, but he does want the case to be thrown out by the judge who has yet to make his ruling.

Back in 2016, a similar case was dismissed where he was sued by songwriter Ed Townsend who claimed that 'Thinking Out Loud' ripped off Marvin Gaye's 'Let's Get It On'. 

He was not so lucky with accusations that his song 'Photograph' copied Matt Cardle's 'Amazing', however, and ended up settling the matter out of court. He was also forced to add the writers of TLC's 'No Scrubs' to the credits of 'Shape of You' after re-using some of the lyrics.

As much as we want to stand by Ed, who has truthfully been a little hard done by in cases like this, there's certainly a very similar piano chord progression between 'The Rest of Our Life' and 'When I Found You', and the melody is unmistakeably close in some parts of the verses. 

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Though, of course, the other side of it is that neither of them are especially original; the similarities are founded in generic country ballad-writing, and just how much of those nuances can be protected by copyright law?