this shit happens every couple of years, notably for their blues tunes like "Lemon Song". Zeppelin usually settles out of court because there's just no way to defend the fact that they used music in the common core of blues and tried to claim they wrote it. No one owns I-IV-V , but if anyone did, it is DEFINITELY not zeppelin. As for Spirit? idunno, I think they're just circling 'cause there's blood in the water from the oozing, half-living whale that is Led Zeppelin.
FTA: So... yes. Exactly.The lawsuit for copyright infringement was brought by Michael Skidmore, a trustee for Randy Wolfe, also known as Randy California, who was Spirit’s guitarist and the composer of Taurus, who died in 1997.
Wolfe had reportedly considered a copyright lawsuit as far back as the 1980s, but his family said he could never afford it. In a 1991 interview, Wolfe said that Led Zeppelin “used to come up and sit in the front row of all [Spirit’s] shows and became friends … and if they wanted to use [Taurus], that’s fine,” adding: “I’ll let [Led Zeppelin] have the beginning of Taurus for their song without a lawsuit.”
The case was first filed in 2014, in an attempt to block the re-release of Stairway to Heaven.