Led Zeppelin Ruling Blunts Legal Tools for Copyright Plaintiffs

A Ninth Circuit ruling siding with Led Zeppelin in its copyright battle over “Stairway to Heaven” could erect more legal hurdles for future plaintiffs pursuing infringement claims against large music labels.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rescinded its “inverse ratio rule,” which some attorneys said made it easier for courts to find that famous works infringe on more obscure ones. The rule held that a party’s requirement to show similarity is lowered when it can produce more evidence of the infringer’s access to its original work.

The appeals court, whose jurisdiction includes the music publishing hotbed ...