New legal battle for Led Zeppelin

SANFRANCISCO: British rock group Led Zeppelin found itself winding on down the legal road again Saturday after a US appeals court ordered a new trial over claims the rockers copied part of “Stairway to Heaven.”

The court in San Francisco overturned a 2016 judgment by a jury which found no proof the classic 1971 Zeppelin song breached the copyright of “Taurus,” written by Randy Wolfe of a Los Angeles band called Spirit.

Wolfe’s trustee, Michael Skidmore, filed the case in 2015 on behalf of his late friend who long maintained he deserved credit for “Stairway” but drowned in 1997 having never taken legal action over the song. The case is “remanded for a new trial,” the higher court panel ruled Friday in a 37-page decision supporting Skidmore’s appeal. It said that certain instructions to the district court jury had been “erroneous and prejudicial” by arguing that common musical elements are not protected by copyright, and by failing to clarify that the arrangement of elements in the public domain could be considered original.

Experts called by the plaintiffs at the lower court said there were substantial similarities between key parts of the two songs, but defence witnesses testified the chord pattern used in the melancholic guitar intro to “Stairway” was so commonplace that copyright didn’t apply. Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, sued along with it singer Robert Plant and another bandmate, John Paul Jones, testified the chord had “been around forever.”