Led Zeppelin Prevails in Copyright Dispute as Supreme Court Declines to Hear Case
Christopher Marlowe has, perhaps, stepped ever so slightly to stage left in order to make room for a guitarist named Randy Wolfe—or, as he was known, Randy California. But, just as William Shakespeare will eternally clutch the most pertinent spotlight with Marlowe in the shadows, Wolfe and his band Spirit will remain only glimpsed behind history’s darling of rock: Led Zeppelin.
After the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Monday, October 5, to uphold a 2016 decision on Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, thus silencing the six-year-long legal battle and incidentally awarding Marlowe-status to Zeppelin’s accuser.
In 2014, an estate representative of Wolfe (who passed away in 1997), Michael Skidmore, officially alleged that Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” was a work of theft despite its renown as merely a work of rock genius. The famed guitar riff, he claimed, was stolen from Spirit’s instrumental track, “Taurus,” released in 1968.
“What you have here is a big win for the multi-billion-dollar industry against the creatives,” Skidmore’s lawyer Francis Malofiy told Rolling Stone. “I love Zeppelin, as a man, and I can separate my appreciation for them as four band members playing amazing music, but they’re the greatest art thieves of all time and they got away with it again today.”
When “Stairway” debuted under Atlantic Records in 1971, Led Zeppelin had already toured with Spirit in the 1960s. Jimmy Page, Zeppelin’s lead guitarist, even admitted to owning the album on which “Taurus” appeared.
However, the court’s decision overturned the “inverse ratio rule,” which allowed works to be seen as infringement issues if there was a “high degree of access” to the piece—rather than basing the transgression on palpable artistic similarities alone. Despite having possessed the album and thus having clear access to “Taurus,” Page claimed no direct knowledge of the track.
The court said that the inverse ratio rule “defies logic,” justifying their landmark ruling.
“They won on a technicality,” Malofiy said. “But they absolutely stole that piece of work.”
Additionally, both songs were written prior to the 1976 Copyright Act, which covers sound recordings; instead, they sit under the 1909 Copyright Act, which only protects sheet music. With that in mind, the court refused to allow Skidmore to play the songs for members of the jury—the difference in copyright coverage meant hearing the potential similarities could not be taken into consideration during trial.
“Accordingly,” the court said, “it was not error for the district court to decline (Skidmore’s) request to play sound recordings of the ‘Taurus’ performance that contained further embellishments or to admit recordings on the issue of substantial similarity.”
The inverse ratio rule, in particular, makes this ruling so radical. In recent years, copyright battles have played out in the music industry with extremely high-profile artists—famously, Katy Perry dealt with copyright court inquiries for “Dark Horse,” and Robin Thicke engaged in his own legal confrontation, pitting “Blurred Lines” against Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up.”
Without the inverse ratio rule to delineate infringement with clarity, these scuffles may be tossed out early. Previously, circuit courts had been somewhat split in considering the rule, but Monday’s ruling marks a definitive strike to its merit in the contemporary music industry. “To the extent ‘access’ still has meaning, the inverse ratio rule unfairly advantages those whose work is most accessible by lowering the standard of proof for similarity,” wrote Judge R. Gary Klausner. He added that “nothing in copyright law suggests that a work deserves stronger legal protection simply because it is more popular or owned by better-funded rights holds.”
The allegations in Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin are subject to a “laches defense,” in which an unreasonable delay in the complaint may raise additional scrutiny in the case. However, a previous case in the Supreme Court, Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc., ensured that copyright infringement could be considered despite the rising sands of times, so Zeppelin’s use of this defense to dismiss the case was rejected.
On the question of similarity between the works, the court heard from two expert musicologists, Dr. Alexander Stewart and Dr. Lawrence Ferrara. The former, Skidmore’s expert, pointed out five key similarities and asserted that these were the essential unique qualities distinguishing the piece; the latter “testified that the two compositions are completely distinct.” Ferrara insisted the supposed similarities were random, common, and legally unprotectable. Based on these experts, the court said Skidmore “does not make a substantial evidence claim.”
Judge Klausner also referred to the 1973 case Goldstein v. California, in which “composers were to have no control over the recordings themselves,” but, rather, be entitled to compensation for reproduction of sheet music—a question, then, of “formalities” in possessing the sheet music. Without a physical deposit copy of “Taurus” submitted to offer it legal protection, the court said, “We need not play this ‘what if’ guessing game because the statute is clear and unambiguous.”
Instructions to the jury defined copyright inclusions for their consideration, stating that copyright “only protects the author’s original expression in a work and does not protect ideas, themes or common musical elements, such as descending chromatic scales, arpeggios or short sequences of three notes.” On this, the court ruled, the challenge presented was “unprotectable.”
Skidmore says he will seek to appeal, but the case is now essentially complete. When the Supreme Court declined to take the case for consideration, the result became a testament in music history: Wolfe, like Marlowe, may skirt the accused’s illustrious status in the spotlight, but will forever cast at least some shadow on their shared stage.
