The judge presiding over a lawsuit challenging the authenticity of Led Zeppelin's signature song "Stairway To Heaven" has rejected a bid to delay the case, setting the stage for a May trial - if it doesn't get settled or dismissed before then, reports Vernon Silver of Bloomberg.com. 

Now, according to a report issued by The Wrap, lawyers for Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones have fired off a blistering opposition to plaintiff Michael Skidmore’s application to modify the scheduling order for the case.

In the legal papers filed last week, Team Zep accuses Skidmore’s side of dragging its feet, then demanding more time at the 11th hour, with the cut-off for discovery in the case set for Thursday.

“Plaintiff filed this action on the District Court in Pennsylvania on May 31, 2014, and it was transferred here on May 18, 2015,” the opposition, filed in federal court in California, reads. “Since then, and since the Court’s Scheduling Order, plaintiff has done little to prosecute this case and defendants’ discovery has confirmed his claim is baseless. Now, on the eve of next Thursday’s discovery cut-off, he seeks the Court’s intervention to provide him more time to pursue that baseless claim. His application should be denied.”

Read more about the current situation via The Wrap here.

The case stems from what, to some ears, is a similarity between "Stairway To Heaven" and "Taurus", an instrumental piece released on Spirit’s debut album in 1968. The musicians deny the infringement allegations and say Robert Plant and Jimmy Page alone wrote the song. Spirit guitarist Randy California, who composed "Taurus", died in 1997. The trustee who handles his royalties sued in May 2014, claiming "falsification of rock 'n' roll history."