A federal appeals court has ordered a new trial on the issue of whether Led Zeppelin band members committed copyright infringement by borrowing elements of another musician’s composition in their classic rock song, “Stairway to Heaven.”

In 2016, a Los Angeles jury held that Led Zeppelin, its band members and other defendants, including New York-based Warner Music Groups Corp., had not infringed the copyright of now-deceased Spirit band member Randy Wolfe by copying elements of his song “Taurus,” according to Friday’s ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in Michael Skidmore, as trustee for the Randy Carin Wolfe Trust v. Led Zeppelin et al.

On appeal, a unanimous three-judge 9th Circuit panel held a new trial was called for because of erroneous jury instructions in the case. The panel agreed with the plaintiff that the district court erred in failing to instruct the jury that “the selection and arrangement of unprotectable musical elements are protectable,” according to the ruling.

It also agreed that the district court erred in telling the jury that copyright does not protect “chromatic, scales, arpeggios or short sequences of three notes.”

“This conclusion runs contrary to our conclusion” in an earlier case “that a limited number of notes can be protected by copyright,” the ruling said.

“In sum, we conclude that the district court’s originality jury instructions erroneously instructed the jury that public domain elements are not copyrightable, even if they are modified in an original manner or included as part of a selection and arrangement,” said the ruling. “We further conclude that these instructions were prejudicial as they undermined the heart of Skidmore’s argument that ‘Taurus’ and ‘Stairway to Heaven’ were extrinsically substantially similar,” said the ruling, in remanding the case for a new trial.

On May 31, a U.S. court of appeals affirmed a lower court decision and ruled in favor of rapper Jay-Z in a long-running copyright infringement dispute over his use of music in his hit song “Big Pimpin’” that was written by an Egyptian composer.