Ed Sheeran said he felt “dirty” after settling a copyright case in the US and now films all his songwriting sessions to protect against future claims.

The singer-songwriter, along with Snow Patrol’s John McDaid and producer Steven McCutcheon, faced accusations that their track Shape Of You copied Oh Why, a 2015 track by Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue.

A High Court judge on Wednesday concluded that Sheeran “neither deliberately nor subconsciously” copied a phrase from Oh Why when writing his number one hit.

Speaking for the first time since the legal victory, the musician told BBC Two’s Newsnight that dealing with copyright claims made him feel “dirty”.

Referencing a claim made in 2017 about his song Photograph in the US, which he settled, he said: “I just stopped playing it. I felt weird about it, it kind of made me feel dirty.”

‘Now I just film everything’

Sheeran, 31, said he films the entire creative process of developing new songs to avoid any unfounded copyright claims being made against him.

“Now I just film everything,” he said. “We’ve had claims come through on the songs and we go, well here’s the footage and you watch. You’ll see there’s nothing there.”

Discussing the Shape Of You claim, he said the episode had made him “sad” and changed how he views songwriting.

He said he feels apprehensive when starting to write a new song because he worries he might be “touching someone else’s notes” – as the Beatle George Harrison put it – when he begins playing the piano. “You find yourself, in the moment, second-guessing yourself,” he said.

He and his co-authors originally launched legal proceedings in May 2018, asking the High Court to declare that they had not infringed Chokri and O’Donoghue’s copyright.

Two months later, Chokri and O’Donoghue issued their own claim for “copyright infringement, damages and an account of profits in relation to the alleged infringement”. The pair alleged that an “Oh I” hook in Shape Of You was “strikingly similar” to an “Oh why” refrain in their own track.

All three Shape Of You co-authors denied allegations of copying and said they did not remember hearing Oh Why before the legal fight.

During the 11-day trial in London last month, Sheeran denied that he “borrows” ideas from unknown songwriters without acknowledgement and insisted he “always tried to be completely fair” in crediting people who contribute to his albums.