Led Zeppelin suit latest in chorus of notable copyright cases

Did Led Zeppelin steal the opening melody to Stairway to Heaven?

That question will soon be decided in a U.S. courtroom — but it's just the latest in a series of high-profile music copyright cases. And Charles Cronin tracks pretty much all of them.

Cronin is a lecturer in law at the University of Southern California who specializes in copyright. He also maintains the Music Copyright Infringement Resource, a website that tracks notable music copyright cases as far back as 1844.

He cites, for example, a 1946 case involving Cole Porter as precedent-setting.

A musician named Ira Arnstein claimed one of his songs had been ripped off by Porter for his Don't Fence Me In. And although Arnstein eventually lost the case, Cronin said it's an important one.

"The reason the case is so significant is that the court held that the issue of whether there was substantial similarity of protected expression had to be decided by lay listeners, so ordinary observers … in these cases," said Cronin.

That means music copyright cases are typically decided by a jury of people who have no specific expertise in music — but they must determine whether the songs sound similar enough to constitute infringement.

That, Cronin said, is what happened in a 2015 case involving Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams. A jury awarded Marvin Gaye's children nearly $7.4 million US after determining Thicke and Williams copied Gaye's Got to Give It Up to create their hit Blurred Lines.

Cronin said the case is interesting in that there's no note-for-note comparison to be made — just an overall feeling and similar instrumentation.

But he also said Thicke and Williams lost the jury trial, at least in part, because they were unlikable defendants. Thicke, for example, admitted to being drunk and high during interviews in which he talked about the inspiration for the song, often referencing Marvin Gaye.

"I tell whatever I want to say to help sell records," he said in a 2014 deposition. 

He also said he exaggerated his contribution to the song's writing.

"I had a drug and alcohol problem for the year and I didn't do a sober interview," he said in the deposition. "So I don't recall many things that I said."

But even likable defendants can lose copyright cases — like former Beatle George Harrison. He was accused of stealing aspects of the Chiffons song He's So Fine for his own My Sweet Lord.

In this case, it seems there are quite a few similarities in the notation and structure of the songs. Harrison said it was unintentional. But Cronin said that doesn't matter.

"The court found that George Harrison was not even aware of the potential infringement, that somehow this is something that may have come to him in his sleep, or that he was unconscious of the fact that he was taking someone else's potential expression," he said.

Nonetheless, Harrison lost the case.

As for the case in the news right now — involving Stairway to Heaven — on April 8, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner ruled that lawyers for the trustee of the late Randy Wolfe, guitarist for the band Spirit, had shown enough evidence to support a case that Led Zeppelin copied music from the instrumental Spirit track Taurus.

Cronin believes the argument against Led Zeppelin is thin. But he also said many recent suits have favoured plaintiffs, and the rock stars may end up settling.

A jury trial is scheduled to begin in Los Angeles on May 10.