A federal appeals court in California has judged that Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven did not infringe the copyright of another song, Taurus, by a Los Angeles band Spirit.

In 2016 a district court made a decision that there was no infringement, but this was overturned in 2018. Led Zeppelin then took the case to appeal and now the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has upheld the 2016 trial verdict and reinstated the original ruling based on the 1090 Copyright Act. The case went to a high-profile trial in 2016, at which Page and Plant gave evidence.

Taurus was written in 1968, three years before Stairway to Heaven however the two bands had played live together during this time.  Lawyers for Wolfe’s trustee argued that the two songs had similar chord progressions and that this constituted a breach of copyright.

The Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page testified in 2016 that the chord sequence had “been around for ever”.

Stairway To Heaven is regularly listed as one of the greatest rock songs ever written, and the case has been one of the music industry’s longest-running and closely-watched disputes.  Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page, who wrote the song, could have faced a bill for millions of dollars in damages if they had lost.