• Rock.Led Zeppelin did not plagiarize 'Stairway to Heaven'

A US court once again considered that the Led Zeppelin band did not plagiarize the Taurus theme for its mythical composition Stairway to Heaven , written three years earlier by the Spirit band , something that already ruled another different court in 2016, after several years of controversy.

In the new vote, issued by a court in San Francisco (USA), a jury decided, by nine votes in favor and two against, that the initial passage of the Led Zeppelin song, despite its similarity, is not a direct plagiarism of the Spirit song.

The decision repeats the conclusion that in 2016 another jury took in a Los Angeles court , although on that occasion it was unanimous.

Among other conclusions, the new court of appeals said that the judge of first instance was right in not allowing the first jury to listen to the sound recording of the song allegedly plagiarized and written three years earlier by guitarist Randy Wolfe, of the band Spirit.

The decision alleges that at the time Wolfe had the copyright of the Taurus score in 1967, the copyright law encompassed only written scores and not musical recordings, so instead of listening to the full recording of the band, the jurors heard a partial reconstruction played by a guitarist and based on the score.

For years, Led Zeppelin was accused that the famous introduction of Stairway to Heaven guitar , published in 1971, was copied directly from the instrumental song Taurus, created by the band Spirit in 1968.

The lawyers of Led Zeppelin defended that the plaintiffs had failed to show evidence on the alleged illicit copy of the subject and argued, among other aspects, that they have failed to prove that Led Zeppelin listened to Taurus before writing his mythical song.

The truth is that Spirit and Led Zeppelin played together several times in the late 1960s and according to Spirit's legal representatives, guitarist Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin asked to be taught Taurus's initial chords .

But that first court date was resolved by a unanimous decision of a jury in favor of Led Zeppelin, who defended at all times that the resemblance between the two songs was limited "to a chromatic scale descending tones" very popular in the world of music, so it could not be subject to copyright protection.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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