Photo via Ed Sheeran’s Instagram

English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran has won his copyright battle that went all the way to England’s High Court. The suit was filed on the basis that Sheeran and his co-writers, Johnny McDaid (Snow Patrol) and producer Steve Mac plagiarized Sami Chkri’s 2015 song “Oh Why” in their chart-topping 2017 song “Shape of You” – which became Spotify’s first song to hit 3 billion streams.

In the ruling, the judge declared that Sheeran “neither deliberately nor subconsciously” copied from “Oh Why” as the artist insisted throughout the trial. Additionally, over the 11-days of proceedings, Sheeran stated that he never “borrows” ideas from other artists without crediting them and he “always tried to be completely fair” in acknowledging his contributors.

After the trial, Sheeran posted to Twitter to express his joy with the ruling but more importantly address the core of the issue that lead to the entire legal ordeal.

Sheeran said, “While we’re obviously happy with the result, I feel like claims like this are way too common now and have become a culture where a claim is made with the idea that a settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court. Even if there’s no base for the claim. It’s really damaging to the songwriting industry. There’s only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music. Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released every day on Spotify. I don’t want to take anything away from the pain and hurt suffered by both sides of this case, but I just want to say that I’m not an entity. I’m not a corporation. I’m a human being. I’m a father. I’m a husband. I’m a son. Lawsuits are not a pleasant experience and I hope with this ruling it means in the future baseless claims like this can be avoided.”

Watch Sheeran’s full statement on Twitter below: