Led Zeppelin win Stairway to Heaven copyright infringement case against trustee of Randy Wolfe

[Dr. Zoidberg]

Led Zeppelin win Stairway to Heaven copyright infringement case against trustee of Randy Wolfe

Led Zeppelin have defeated a lawsuit which claimed they plagiarised a guitar riff featured in their hit song Stairway to Heaven.

The lawsuit had claimed the riff was copied from a 1968 song, Taurus, by the band Spirit.

A jury in Los Angeles took just a day to reach the verdict after a week of testimony from music experts, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant, and Michael Skidmore, the trustee of the estate of Taurus songwriter Randy Wolfe.

Wolfe died in 1997.

Page and Plant denied they had heard Taurus prior to writing Stairway to Heaven, though the court heard the two bands had performed on double bills during their early years.

The jury agreed after a day of deliberation, having both songs played to them again, that the key elements of Taurus were not "extrinsically similar" to Stairway to Heaven.

The verdict was rendered just a half-hour after the two songs were played for the last time.

Both Page and Plant were in the courtroom when the verdict was announced.

The case, unusually, did not actually hinge on the similarity between the two songs - that had been established prior to the trial - but rather whether exposure to the earlier song influenced Page and Plant during the writing of Stairway to Heaven.

After the verdict was announced, Page and Plant released a statement thanking the jury for their "conscientious service".

The statement said the verdict "put to rest questions about the origins of Stairway to Heaven and [confirmed] what we have known for 45 years."

"We appreciate our fans support and look forward to putting this legal matter behind us," Page and Plant said.

Taurus was written by Wolfe - using the stage name Randy California - and was released on a 1968 album from Spirit.

Stairway to Heaven was written by Page and Plant and released in 1971 on Led Zeppelin's fourth studio album.

Though the album was not officially titled, Led Zeppelin fans refer to it as Led Zeppelin IV.

Source: The Age