Led Zeppelin to face the new Stairway to Heaven trial

Led Zeppelin faces a new trial over claims that the band stole a guitar riff for their 1971 song, Stairway to Heaven.

A California appellate court quashed a case in 2016 that the group had not stolen the opening of their tube at Taurus by the Spirit group.

The court cited a series of errors made by the previous judge.

Members of Led Zeppelin's group, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, however, say that the song is their masterpiece, which they wrote in a Welsh cottage.

Michael Skidmore, director of songs for Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe, initially lodged a complaint in 2015.

Mr. Wolfe, also known as Randy California, drowned in the Pacific to save his 12 year old son in 1997.

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On Friday, Judge Richard Paez of the 9th US Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the trial judge made several mistakes.

The judge would not have told the jurors that Mr. Wolfe's trustee could win if the guitarist had written a "sufficiently original combination" of musical elements.

According to a Reuters report on the decision, he should not have spoken to the jurors about the "copyright of the musical elements of the public domain".

Led Zeppelin's lawyers did not immediately comment on the case.

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The original trial began with the jury being played various performances of both songs.

In his opening remarks, the plaintiff's lawyer, Francis Malofiy, stated that the case could be summed up in six words: "give credit when credit is due".

Page and Plant were both "amazing performers, incredible musicians, but they covered the music of others and tried to make it their own," he said.

But the jury concluded that although both bands played on the same song a year before the release of Stairway to Heaven, the two riffs were not intrinsically similar.

The copyright case will now return to the district court.