Ed Sheeran denies Shape of You copyright claim at High Court trial

Ed Sheeran has told the High Court he does not "borrow" ideas from unknown songwriters without credit.

The singer-songwriter has been accused by two other songwriters of copying parts of his 2017 hit Shape Of You.

Sami Chokri and Ross O'Donoghue's barrister suggested Sheeran treated lesser known songwriters differently from famous ones.

Sheeran denied this, telling the court he had cleared parts of songs with "lots" of unknown artists.

Shape of You was number one for 14 weeks in the UK in 2017, becoming the best selling song of the year around the world.

In May 2018, Sheeran and his co-writers issued proceedings asking the High Court to declare they had not infringed Chokri and O'Donoghue's copyright.

The pair then issued a counter claim for copyright infringement.

On Friday, their barrister Andrew Sutcliffe QC claimed Sheeran "borrows ideas and throws them into his songs, sometimes he will acknowledge it but sometimes he won't".

Giving evidence on Monday, the singer gave several examples of times he had cleared parts of songs with little known artists.

"If Mr Sutcliffe would have done his research", he added, he would have known he had cleared parts of songs with "lots" of unknown composers.