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Led Zep wins in 'Stairway to Heaven' copyright trial

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Led Zep wins in 'Stairway to Heaven' copyright trial

(Reuters) — Led Zeppelin prevailed on Thursday in a copyright lawsuit brought against surviving members of the British rock band, as jurors rejected a claim that the opening guitar passage from its classic hit “Stairway to Heaven” was lifted from the lesser-known U.S. band Spirit.

The jury's verdict, which found substantial differences between “Stairway to Heaven” and Spirit's instrumental track “Taurus,” followed a weeklong federal court trial in Los Angeles that had called into question the originality of the 1971 song by Led Zeppelin, one of the top-selling rock acts of all time.

Legal experts said the unanimous verdict, reached on the jury's second day of deliberations, could narrow the grounds on which future copyright infringement challenges are brought in the music industry.

The jury found Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page had access to “Taurus,” a song written in 1967, but that the riff they were accused of stealing was not intrinsically similar to the opening chords of “Stairway.”

Page, 72, and Plant, 67, who testified and were present throughout the closely watched trial, showed little immediate reaction to the verdict in court.

“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,” Page and Plant said in a joint statement.

Led Zeppelin bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones also took the stand during the trial. Originally sued along with Page and Plant, he was later dismissed as a defendant. The band's drummer, John Bonham, died in 1980, the year the group disbanded.

Led Zeppelin was the opening act for the now-defunct U.S. band on tour in the United States in 1968, the lawsuit said.

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