Stairway to Heaven Copyright Trial

emigre80 wrote: dr wu23 wrote: ^You are right.....so why is it moving forward when it's in the public domain as an old trad song..? Speaking as a legal professional (finally! my area of expertise!) judges are often reluctant to stop a case on disputed facts, lest they look ignorant about a subject area they are being asked to rule on.   In other words, they don't want to know if the emperor has no clothes, only if they would be thought fools for issuing a judgment stating that he did not. Safer to let the case advance, leave it up a jury and let them take the blame if they get it wrong.

Ooh, there's a tritone in a Sabbath song, and a tritone in a Magma song - don't see them making a fuss over it

Interestingly,  I heard that the jury was instructed not to listen to the songs themselves, but look at the sheet music. In fact, here's a website that compares the two tabs:

Nor did Tull and Anderson ever sue the Eagles.

Waste of everything.

Only top line melody and lyrics can be subject to copyright. There was a joke about Metallica owning chords. http://edition.cnn.com/2003/LAW/07/17/ctv.metallica/ This is the same sort of thing; only life imitates comedy.

The bit in question has been used on songs such as Let It Grow (Clapton admitted he accidentally rewrote etc...) and This Masquerade (bearing the same harmony as Taurus but not Stairway). There was a number by Davey Graham in 1959 that uses a kind of folk blues rhythm of the tune. But it's been around since 1640 or so. Neither RC nor JP really wrote it; they just think they did.

Anyway I think it's evident to some now that there is a world of music outside the fading called rock. Still it was only during this trial that I learned about Stairway to Carolan. No wonder this number seemed the best composed piece on the 4th album, and no wonder why.