Eriq Gardner of the Hollywood Reporter reports:
Led Zeppelin is stuck in Pennsylvania at the moment, forced to confront claims forced to confront claims the band stole its biggest hit Stairway to Heaven from Randy Craig Wolfe, founding member of the band Spirit.
Wolfe’s heirs sued Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and their music companies in June, asserting that the story Page has told over the years about holing himself up in a remote cottage in Wales in 1970 and creating the iconic song is false. The plaintiff alleges that the music really came from Spirit, which once toured with Led Zeppelin in the late 1960s. To hear the song in question, please click here.
In reaction to the lawsuit, the defendants challenged jurisdiction.
“The individual defendants are British citizens residing in England, own no property in Pennsylvania and have no contacts with Pennsylvania, let alone ties sufficient to render them essentially at home here,” stated a memorandum to dismiss.
In response, the plaintiff amended the lawsuit with some emphasis on why a Pennsylvania judge should oversee the case: “Defendants are subject to specific jurisdiction in this district because they make millions of dollars from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by directly targeting this district for the exploitation of Stairway to Heaven through CD sales, digital downloading, radio and television play, advertising, marketing, concert performances, other performances, licensing, and otherwise targeting resident individuals and businesses to profit off the exploitation of Stairway to Heaven.’
U.S. District Court Judge Juan Sánchez has now denied the motion to dismiss or transfer without prejudice, meaning that the Zeppelin parties can still try again.
The judge didn’t offer any reasoning in his written order, but those looking for the standards by which judges determine jurisdiction can read about another judge’s recent decision to throw out a trademark lawsuit filed by John Wayne’s heirs against Duke University.
source: hollywoodreporter.com
32 Responses
Just blame it all on Ace and Peter because they didn’t contribute,.,lol.
Really? Led Zeppelin makes “millions of dollars” from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania? Wow, so if that’s just one region, when you combine all they must be making from the rest of the world Zep must be raking in billions of dollars! They’d have to be an economy unto themselves on a scale even larger than Dethklok!
I can’t deny there’s a similarity in the songs, but it’s just a passing similarity on that one part. Stairway carries on into vastly different and broader territory. If we’re going to start suing people for passing resemblances in chord progressions, then we may as well say all the world’s music has legally already been written and there’s nothing more anyone can do. It’s like if I write a book that contains a sentence “The Sun rose over the mountains in California at 6:15am, and Lt. Joe Pilot strapped into the cockpit of his jet fighter”, and I file a suit against someone who writes another book that contains “The Sun rose over the mountains as the clouds from the previous night’s storm drifted out to sea”. The first few words are the same, but the rest is totally different. This Stairway thing sounds just like that to me.
This is just a long shot but I’m guessing they didn’t file it in England because it WOULD have been dismissed immediately.
Led Zeppelin has already settled, a few years ago, with the estate of Ritchie Valens for the Zeppelin song “Boogie with Stu” It was a blatant rip off of Ritchie Valens song “Ooh My Head” Valens estate sued and it was settled out of court.
Valens’ estate sold their rights to his catalog decades ago to his crooked manages and record label owner.