This is the second trial in a year for the 32-year-old British singer and songwriter, who won a separate legal battle last April at the High Court in London, which rejected two musicians accusing him of copying one of their works, for his mega hit "Shape of you".

This time, the plaintiffs are the heirs of Ed Townsend, an American musician and producer who co-wrote "Let's get it on" with Marvin Gaye. Released in 1973, this soul classic has remained famous for its guitar notes and sensual vocalizations from the prince of soul and the Motown label.

In federal court in Manhattan, Ed Sheeran arrived, head down, without saying a word to the forest of cameras, followed by Townsend's daughter, Kathryn Townsend Griffin. "I'm here for justice, to protect my father's intellectual property," she told reporters.

"Let's go!"

The plaintiffs' lawyer, Ben Crump, said of the hit headline "Let's get it on": "As Marvin Gaye would have said, let's go!"

In their copyright infringement complaint, Townsend's heirs say there are "striking similarities" to "Thinking Out Loud," released in 2014.

They want as proof that the group Boyz 2 Men had mixed the two songs on stage. Ed Sheeran himself had chained in concert the lines, very different, of the two tubes, on the same harmonies of guitar, a sequence still visible on the internet.

A "proof" disputed by the singer's lawyers, for whom "there are dozens, even hundreds of songs before and after +Let's get it on + that use the same chord progression or a similar progression".

Ed Sheeran's hit ranked 2nd on the Billboard Hot 100, the US benchmark chart and won the Grammy Award for best song of the year in 2016.

The complaint, filed in 2016, was first dismissed on a procedural issue, then filed again in 2017, also against Sony.

Kathryn Townsend Griffin, daughter of co-writer and producer Ed Townsend of a Marvin Gaye song, arrives at New York federal court on April 25, 2023 for an alleged plea trial filed against pop singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran © Kena Betancur / AFP

As in New York, Ed Sheeran had come in person to defend his song "Shape of you" in the previous trial in London, a case that he considered emblematic of abusive practices that undermine creation.

The London judge had ruled in favour of Ed Sheeran, considering that he had not copied, even "unconsciously", part of the melody of the song "Oh why" (2015) by Sami Chokri and Ross O'Donoghue.

The judge had noted "obvious similarities" between the two songs, with a melody from the minor pentatonic scale as "countless pop, rock, folk and blues songs", but also "important differences".

The American Marvin Gaye is considered one of the great artists of soul and popular music of the last century. Born in 1939 in Washington, he died in 1984 in Los Angeles, killed by his father after an argument on the eve of his 45th birthday.

© 2023 AFP