Led Zeppelin prevails in ‘Stairway’ appeal
“Stairway to Heaven” is an original — no new trial needed.
That is the upshot of an appellate court’s decision, announced Monday, which upheld a jury’s verdict that Led Zeppelin’s 1971 classic did not copy “Taurus,” a much-lesserknown song by guitarist and singer Randy Wolfe that was recorded in 1968 by his band, Spirit.
Although Led Zeppelin had been accused of plagiarism plenty of times before, the “Stairway” case came under close scrutiny in the music industry both because the song is the band’s signature accomplishment — an eightminute odyssey that by some estimates has earned more than $500 million — and because it followed another closely watched trial, over Robin Thicke’s song “Blurred Lines.”
In that case, Thicke and Pharrell Williams, the song’s principal writers, were ordered to pay more than $5 million to the family of Marvin Gaye, a decision that many songwriters, lawyers and academics have criticized as harmful to creativity.
In 2016, a jury in the “Stairway” case found that Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, the song’s two credited writers, did not infringe on the copyright of “Taurus.” The band’s lawyers argued that what little the two songs had in common — a chord progression and a descending chromatic scale — were musical elements too basic to be protected by copyright. A musicologist testifying on Led Zeppelin’s behalf said that similar patterns have popped up in music for more than 300 years.
An unusual appeals process followed. In 2018, an appeals court ordered a new trial, saying the jury had not received proper instructions. But last year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in San Francisco, decided to rehear the case “en banc,” or before a full panel of 11 judges. Even the Trump administration weighed in, with a Justice Department brief supporting Led Zeppelin.
Part of the “Stairway” appeal came down to the minutiae of what was copyrighted in “Taurus.” Before 1978, songs had to be submitted through sheet music to the Copyright Office. Francis Malofiy, the lawyer for the plaintiff — a trustee for the songs of Wolfe, also known as Randy California, who died in 1997 — argued that in the case of “Taurus” this so-called deposit copy was incomplete, and that the full composition of the song was “embodied” in Spirit’s album recording.
In an interview, Malofiy said he was disappointed by the decision, and was considering whether to appeal the case further.