Structured Asset Sales, LLC v. Sheeran
- Louis Stanton
- 1:18-cv-05839
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Structured Asset Sales v. Sheeran, Judge Stanton limited copyright-trial evidence by excluding references to a sound recording and restricting expert testimony.
The order directly affected Structured Asset Sales, LLC, its experts, the defendants, and the evidence available to the jury in the copyright case.
What happened
Structured Asset Sales, LLC alleged that elements of Ed Sheeran’s song “Thinking Out Loud” infringed the copyright in “Let’s Get It On.” The defendants asked the court to decide what evidence could be presented to the jury before trial.
The court ruled that the deposited sheet music, called the “Deposit Copy,” defined the copyrighted work. Because the Deposit Copy did not include the musical elements added in the Gaye sound recording, the plaintiff could not use that recording in a way that might lead the jury to compare “Thinking Out Loud” with unprotected elements. The plaintiff’s experts had to remove references to the Gaye recording from their reports and could not discuss it without the court’s prior approval.
The court also limited evidence about prior musical works to material submitted by the defendants because it found the plaintiff’s experts had not adequately researched that issue. The experts’ revised reports and testimony also had to avoid opinions unsupported by facts or opinions that stated legal conclusions. Judge Louis L. Stanton ordered the plaintiff to provide revised expert reports within 30 days.
The detailed version
- Structured Asset Sales, LLC v. Sheeran · No. 1:18-cv-05839
- Louis Stanton
- Sept. 9, 2021
Background
The opinion addresses defendants’ motion in limine, which seeks rulings about evidence and testimony presented to the jury. Structured Asset Sales, LLC’s experts based their infringement opinions in part on similarities between Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” and a combination of three elements described as the “backing pattern” in “Let’s Get It On”: a chord progression, the anticipation of chord changes, and a bass line.
Copyrighted Work
The court held that the sheet music deposited with the Copyright Office—the “Deposit Copy”—defined the copyrighted work. The court stated that the copyright did not extend to musical elements that were not included in that copy, even if those elements were later added by Ed Townsend or appeared in the commercially released sound recording by Marvin Gaye. The court specifically stated that the chord progression and harmonic anticipation were commonplace and unprotectable, and that the Deposit Copy contained no notation or specification of a bass line.
Limits on the Sound Recording
The court ruled that the Gaye sound recording was inadmissible in any manner that could confuse the jury into treating its additional elements as protected. Comparisons between “Thinking Out Loud” and elements found in the Gaye recording but not in the Deposit Copy were not allowed. The plaintiff’s experts were ordered to delete references to the Gaye sound recording from their reports and were prohibited from mentioning it in testimony without prior court approval.
Expert Reports and Prior Art
The plaintiff was ordered to provide defendants with final versions of the experts’ reports, as amended, within 30 days. The court found that one plaintiff expert had ignored prior art and that another had conducted research too superficially to qualify as research. Accordingly, the court ordered that proof concerning the existence of prior art would be limited to material submitted by defendants. The experts’ corrected reports and testimony also had to avoid opinions unsupported by facts and opinions that suggested legal conclusions.
Disposition
The opinion states that the issues raised by defendants’ application were disposed of through these evidentiary and expert-testimony directives. It does not use a single overall “granted” or “denied” label for the motion.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.