On This Day in 2016, Jimmy Page Defended Led Zeppelin’s Most Iconic Riff During a Years-Long Copyright Lawsuit

On this day (June 15), Jimmy Page was in court defending Led Zeppelin against allegations that they stole the opening riff to “Stairway to Heaven” from an older song called “Taurus” by Spirit. It was just one of many hearings in which he had to defend the originality of one of the most iconic riffs in rock history.

The acoustic intro to “Stairway to Heaven” is etched in the minds of generations of rock fans. Guitarists around the world have worked hard to play it, even if they weren’t Led Zeppelin fans. So, when allegations that Page and the band had stolen the riff started floating around the internet in the 2010s, people were shocked. Page was one of them.

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According to The Guardian, Page didn’t know people were comparing “Taurus” and “Stairway” until his son-in-law brought it to his attention. In fact, he didn’t know he owned Spirit’s self-titled debut album at the time. Furthermore, he claimed to have never heard the song he was being accused of plagiarizing.

He was, however, familiar with Spirit and another song from the same album. They used a riff from “Fresh Garbage” in an early medley. Page claimed to have only heard that song on the radio.

In the end, the court ruled in Led Zeppelin’s favor. Then, in 2018, a panel of judges overturned the ruling. Two years later, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the original ruling. Later that year, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. This put a definitive end to the years-long legal back-and-forth.

Why Led Zeppelin Won the Legal Battle

Even if Jimmy Page had borrowed heavily from “Taurus” to create “Stairway to Heaven,” Randy Wolfe’s estate was still fighting an uphill battle.

First and foremost, as Page and Led Zeppelin’s legal team pointed out, the chord progression in the “Stairway” intro isn’t unique. To highlight this, they played “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from Mary Poppins, which is also built around the same progression. “I think I have said the chord sequence is very similar because that chord sequence has been around forever,” Page said on the stand.

Maybe the biggest hurdle the plaintiff faced in this case was the copyright law that protected both songs. “Taurus,” released in 1968, and “Stairway to Heaven,” released in 1971. So, both are protected under the 1909 Copyright Act, according to Rolling Stone. The law only applies to sheet music. The Copyright Act of 1976 applies to audio recordings. As a result, the two songs weren’t played side-by-side for the jury.

The Wider Impact of the Case

The case wasn’t just a win for Led Zeppelin, though. The judge’s initial decision overturned the “inverse ratio rule,’ which held that “if one party can prove a high degree of access to a certain work, the less substantial the similarities need to be to prove infringement.” In other words, proving infringement of a popular work is much easier than proving infringement of a lesser-known work.

In his decision, Judge R. Gary Klausner set legal precedent and overruled cases previously ruled on by the Ninth Circuit. He said that the rule “defies logic and creates uncertainty for the courts and parties. We take this opportunity to abrogate the rule in the Ninth Circuit and overrule our prior cases to the contrary.”

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