Randy Skidmore: Randy Craig Wolfe Trust

Michel Skidmore, who is the plaintiff in this case, is a trustee in the Randy Craig Wolfe Trust. Randy Craig Wolfe, a guitarist, started a band named Spirit with four other musicians: Mark Andes (bass), John “Jay” Ferguson (vocals), John Locke (keyboard), and Ed Cassidy (drums) in the year 1967. Spirit released its self-titled debut album Spirit in January 1968, which broke Billboard’s Top 40. On Spirit’s self-titled album was a unique 2 minute and 37 second instrumental titled “Taurus” which was written by Randy Craig Wolfe in the summer of 1967. The song has an ethereal, distinct plucked-guitar line and melody.
Michael Skidmore claims that Led Zeppelin was greatly inspired from Spirit. He claims that Jimmy Patrick Page, guitarist of Led Zeppelin

He also claimed that there are similarities between ‘Taurus’ and the iconic notes, melody, chord progression, structure, tempo, instrumentation, and feel of ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Further the plaintiff said that the question of substantial similarity will be decided by the jury.
The defendants said that substantial similarity is established both an expert under the extrinsic test and by an ordinary person under the intrinsic test. According to the defendant, under the intrinsic test while musicologists( Skidmore’s expert) can testify as to the analytical dissection of the song but he or she has no objective, scientific or reliable basis to testify as to whether an ordinary person would find it substantially similar or not. Further, the similarity in concept and feel in an intrinsic test cannot be taken into account because it threatens the essence of copyright that is the protection for original

The tone progression was not identical in this case (as is clear in fig.1 and fig. 2) and even if it was, it would not have been an infringement. The tone progression in the case of Taurus is only downscaling but in the case of Stairway to heaven it is both down-scaling and up-scaling which further establishes that substantial similarity cannot be established. Lastly, this tone progression is commonly used in the songs of blues tradition and hence would count as Scènes à