The Supreme Court on Monday refused to accept a copyright claim on Led Zeppelin’s classic “Starway to Heaven”, which has fueled a long-running legal dispute over the song. A lower court in California ruled last March that British cash The opening riff of the song is not swept From “Taurus”, written by Randy Wolfe of the Los Angeles band Spirit.
Monday’s decision by the country’s Supreme Court not to hear the case certainly marks the end of legal challenges that have been closely watched by the music industry.
When Led Zeppelin initially won the case in 2016, the court found no evidence at the time that it violated the 1971 classic “Taurus”.
However, that ruling was overturned in 2018 on appeal.
“CDway” is estimated to have earned $ 3.4 million over a five-year period in the issue during the civil trial.
Led Zeppelin Guitarist Jimmy Page – sued the group’s singer Robert Plant and a surviving bandmate John Paul Jones – who confirmed in 2016 that the awkward sequence in question “lasted forever.”
Wolfe’s trustee, Michael Skidmore, filed the case in 2014 on behalf of his late friend, who had long maintained that he deserved credit for “Starway”, but drowned in 1997 without taking legal action against the song.
Experts called by the plaintiff during the lower court trial said there were significant similarities between the main parts of the two songs, but defense witnesses testified that the string pattern used for “starway” in the melancholic guitar prologue was so common that copyright piracy did not apply.
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