Led Zeppelin win Stairway case.

 The Supreme Court have declined to hear the Stairway to Heaven plagiarism case, and so the lower court ruling, exonerating Led Zeppelin, stands. 

The judgment also means that a long-standing (and much debated) copyright case rule in the ninth circuit called "the inverse ratio rule" has been overturned. This said in effect, that if you had a chance to hear the song that is claimed to be the basis of your song, then you *could have* stolen the sound, and if you had a lot of chances to hear the song, then you could have stolen the song even if your song doesn't much sound like the original. No, that doesn't make any sense, but copyright rarely does. It's gone now, we don't have to worry about it. 

I wrote about the case in 2016 and appended a number of YouTube videos of "things that sound like Stairway". It's a fairly common sound in music, both before and after Stairway (and before and after Spirit's Taurus).  And even if it wasn't, it's a bit much to suggest that the first 30 seconds or so of Stairway is the part that made it so iconic. But I won't rehash all of that. There's plenty of takes out there on the interwebs, most of which are "Page nicked things so this case is his just desserts", which I don't agree with either. 

There's a write-up of the case from Variety here, and one from Rolling Stone here.  The Rolling Stone piece has a good write up on the inverse ratio rule.