GUITARIST Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant are expected to give evidence at a civil case in Los Angeles. They are accused of lifting the song’s opening notes from “Taurus,” a 1967 track by the band Spirit.

    Page, 72, and Plant, 67, are being sued by a trust acting for a founding member of Spirit who died in 1997.

    The case began with the jury being played various performances of both songs, including part of Led Zeppelin’s recording of “Stairway to Heaven.”

    In his opening statement, the plaintiff’s lawyer, Francis Malofiy, said the case could be summed up in six words, “give credit where credit is due.”

    Page and Plant were both “incredible performers, incredible musicians but they covered other people’s music and tried to make it their own,” he alleged.

    The band’s lawyer Robert Anderson insisted that the two men “created ‘Stairway to Heaven’ independently without resort to ‘Taurus’ or without copying anything in ‘Taurus.’”

    There was no proof that they had even heard “Taurus” until decades after creating “Stairway to Heaven,” said Anderson.

    Anderson also claimed that the part of the song at issue — a sequence of notes in the opening bars — was a “descending chromatic line … something that appears in all kinds of songs.”

    Such a “commonplace” musical device which “goes back centuries,” was, he claimed, not protected by copyright which in any case was not actually owned by the plaintiff.

    At an earlier hearing, U.S. district judge Gary Klausner had ruled that the two pieces of music were similar enough to let a jury decide whether Page and Plant had infringed copyright.

    “Taurus,” a two-minute-and-37-second instrumental with a distinct plucked guitar line, was released by Spirit in January 1968.

    The plaintiff is reportedly seeking royalties and other compensation of around US$40m.

    According to Bloomberg Businessweek, “Stairway to Heaven” had earned US$562m as of 2008. (SD-Agencies)