{"id":2447669,"date":"2019-08-17T12:50:24","date_gmt":"2019-08-17T18:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=873059"},"modified":"2019-08-17T12:50:24","modified_gmt":"2019-08-17T18:50:24","slug":"justice-department-sides-with-led-zeppelin-in-stairway-to-heaven-legal-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/music-news\/justice-department-sides-with-led-zeppelin-in-stairway-to-heaven-legal-battle\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Department Sides With Led Zeppelin in \u2018Stairway to Heaven\u2019 Legal Battle"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Trump administration weighed in on the legal battle over \u201cStairway to Heaven\u201d this week, with the Department of Justice siding with Led Zeppelin<\/a> in their copyright dispute with the estate of late Spirit<\/a> guitarist Randy (California) Wolfe.<\/p>\n

Although an appeal<\/a> of the lawsuit against Led Zeppelin is still ongoing, the Justice Department filed an amicus<\/a> this week in support of previous judge\u2019s ruling that stated that the copyrights of musical compositions prior to 1972 were only protected as sheet music; in 1972, Congress changed the law to protect sound recordings, NBC News reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaurus,\u201d the Spirit song that Led Zeppelin allegedly infringed on for \u201cStairway to Heaven,\u201d was written in 1967, making it applicable to the previous federal law.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department added that despite the similarities between the two tracks, under the previous federal law, the contested passages must be nearly identical; since they are not, the Justice Department argued Led Zeppelin rightly prevailed in the previous trial under the pre-1972 copyright law.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere should be no serious dispute that the passages of Stairway to Heaven and Taurus that are at issue here are not virtually identical. At a minimum, the notes and rhythm are not all, or even mostly, the same,\u201d the government wrote in the amicus.<\/p>\n

Despite the Department of Justice\u2019s stance, in response to an appeal by the Wolfe estate, the three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals still ordered a new trial Friday, continuing the five-year legal battle. The appeals court found that the previous judge erred during jury instructions as well as refusing to allow the Wolfe estate\u2019s legal team to play \u201cTaurus\u201d during Jimmy Plant\u2019s testimony, Variety<\/em> reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout a selection and arrangement instruction, the jury instructions severely undermined [the Wolfe trustee\u2019s] argument for extrinsic similarity, which is exactly what the jury found lacking,\u201d Circuit Judge Richard A. Paez wrote in his appeals decision Friday. The case will go before an appeals court in September.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration weighed in on the legal battle over \u201cStairway to Heaven\u201d this week, with the Department of Justice siding with Led Zeppelin in their copyright dispute with the estate of late Spirit guitarist Randy (California) Wolfe. Although an appeal of the lawsuit against Led Zeppelin is still ongoing, the Justice Department filed an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2447669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 11:00:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2447669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2447669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2447669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2447669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}