In a story Ghost Cult has been following for some time, a federal appeals court agreed today (Monday, June 10) to give Led Zeppelin a new hearing to defend a jury’s favorable verdict in a suit that claimed the opening lines of ‘Stairway To Heaven’ had been plagiarized from the 1968 instrumental song ‘Taurus’, by the band Spirit. In addition to the band themselves, music experts, including Rik Emmet of Triumph testified that the descending chord progression found in both songs is common in classical and popular music in countless compositions and cannot be “copyrighted” as a signature riff. Last September, a federal appeals court decided unanimously to overturn a jury’s decision that the 1971 track, arguably the most popular classic rock song ever, was not a rip-off of Spirit’s song. Michael Skidmore, the trustee of ‘Taurus’ songwriter Randy “California” Wolfe’s estate, had brought the claims more than four decades after ‘Stairway To Heaven’ appeared on Zep’s untitled album, better known as Led Zeppelin IV or the Zoso album. Skidmore is a well-known in the industry “copyright troll” who’s many lawsuits are cash-grabs without merit.
In June 2016, a Los Angeles jury deliberated for about five hours before deciding unanimously in favor of Led Zeppelin. The verdict in the case came down within 15 minutes of the jury’s request to re-listen to both ‘Taurus’ and ‘Stairway To Heaven’. They wanted to hear a section of each song twice, alternating from one to the other. They decided that what they heard wasn’t substantially similar enough to call it copyright infringement. Skidmore appealed, and in September, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided a new trial was needed because the judge who presided over a 2016 trial had given erroneous and prejudicial instructions to the jury. The court said the judge erred by telling the jury that common musical elements, such as “descending chromatic scales, arpeggios or short sequences of three notes,” were not protected by copyright. The court also said the jury should have been permitted to hear the album recording of ‘Taurus’.
“Without a selection and arrangement instruction, the jury instructions severely undermined Skidmore’s argument for extrinsic similarity, which is exactly what the jury found lacking,” wrote Circuit Judge Richard A. Paez, for the court.
Immediately following the June 2016 verdict, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant released a statement saying that they were glad to see the issue resolved.
“We are grateful for the jury’s conscientious service and pleased that it has ruled in our favor, putting to rest questions about the origins of ‘Stairway To Heaven’ and confirming what we have known for 45 years,” they said. “We appreciate our fans’ support, and look forward to putting this legal matter behind us.”
Plaintiff’s attorney Francis Malofiy later claimed he lost his case on a technicality, insisting that it was unfair the jury was unable to listen to the sound recording of “Taurus” and instead was limited to hearing an expert performance of the registered sheet music.
Malofiy received over a hundred sustained objections and “multiple admonishments” during the ZEPPELIN trial, with the band’s publishing company Warner/Chappell Music filing documents asking the judge to order the plaintiffs to pay over $613,000 in costs for defending against the lawsuit.