LED ZEPPELIN "Stairway To Heaven" Lawsuit Headed Back To Court On Appeal
July 25, 2016, 8 years ago
The former British rock journalist who accused Led Zeppelin of plagiarizing the iconic opening guitar riff in "Stairway To Heaven" has filed an appeal, a little over a month after a jury threw out his claims, reports Courthouse News Services.
At the end of a six-day trial in June, a jury found that Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant did not lift the "Stairway To Heaven" introduction from "Taurus," by the LA-progressive rockers Spirit.
Michael Skidmore had brought the claims on behalf of the Randy Craig Wolfe Trust more than four decades after "Stairway To Heaven" appeared on Led Zeppelin's untitled 1971 album, better known as Led Zeppelin IV.
Skidmore filed a notice of appeal to the Ninth Circuit over the weekend, on July 23rd.
While a federal jury of four men and four women found that Page and Plant had heard "Taurus" before they created "Stairway To Heaven" and that Skidmore had a valid copyright in "Taurus", the jurors decided that Skidmore failed to show by a preponderance of the evidence that original elements of the song were "extrinsically" similar. Read more at this location.
