US Supreme Court won't hear 'Stairway To Heaven' case

By Emmanuel Legrand 

The Supreme Court has declined to hear the case involving Led Zeppelin's song 'Stairway To Heaven' in a copyright infringement case that was initially filed in 2014 by the estate of the late Randy Wolfe, a.k.a. Randy California, of the band Spirit.

  The British band's co-writers Robert Plant and Jimmy Page were accused of lifting parts of Spirit's song 'Taurus' in the opening bars of 'Stairway'. A 2016 court decision found that Led Zeppelin did not infringe the copyright of Wolfe. The ruling was appealed and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco affirmed in March 2020 the verdict of the 2016 trial.

  The high-profile case, which came right after a jury found in favour of the heirs of Marvin Gaye in a case against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams accused of copying Gaye's 'Got to Give It Up' in 'Blurred Lines', has been followed with much interest by lawyers and songwriters alike. At the heart of the court's decision was the evidence the jury was authorised to have access to in order to make a judgment.

An immediate impact

  In the 'Taurus' v. 'Stairway' case, the judges held that the primary evidence was the registration of the song with the US Copyright Office. Wolfe estate's lawyers wanted instead to introduce the recordings of both songs, which was denied by the judges and was at the core of the appeal filed by the estate's lawyer Francis Malofiy, who claimed Led Zeppelin won "on a technicality" in an NPR interview.

  For The New York Times, the Ninth Circuit’s ruling "had an immediate impact and was widely seen as giving an advantage to defendants in music copyright cases, which often include pop stars and the companies that release their music and typically control their copyrights." The newspaper cites the copyright infringement case against Katy Perry, who was had been found copying a melodic pattern from a Christian rap song, but that verdict was crushed in March 2020 by a federal judge.

  Another high-profile case could benefit from the Led Zeppelin case: Ed Sheeran has been sued for allegedly copying Marvin Gaye's 'Let's Get It On' in the song 'Thinking Out Loud'. The case is due to go to court next months, but Sheeran's lawyers have asked for the trial date to be changed as the British songwriter cannot fly to the US due to the pandemic.