Originally Posted By: Belladonna
I'm glad Blue Attitude has answered his post to his satisfaction. However, I feel this is a topic of interest to many others for exactly the same question. I know The Rolling Stones was sued for a song as also was Led Zeppelin and Ed Sheerhan. I believe these suits were more for riffs or melodies but I'm sure a judge somewhere could apply it to lyrics of any song that was successful. I also know the Marvin Gay Estate is pretty suit happy if they hear anything that resembles any of Marvin Gay music.


Zeppelin was successfully sued by Willie Dixon for a couple of songs, actually settled out of court. In that case it was using his lyrics. In one of the songs, "Bring it on Home", the songwriting credit actually reverted to Dixon. The other song was "Whole Lotta Love".

They were also sued by the estate of Randy Wolf (Randy California) for the chord progression and arpeggios used in Stairway to Heaven, identical to a short section of the instrumental "Taurus" by the band "Spirit", however that was unsuccessful.