.where were you for 40 years before that??? u must have heard the song on the radio all the time...you didnt realize it was yours until now??"
Sounds like you missed my earlier comments: sole author of "Taurus" Randy (Wolfe) California
died in 1997.
Suit was brought on behalf of his estate.
His history during the time "STH" was just hitting the airwaves (really not until late '72) suggests somebody dealing with a clinical depression, he'd actually left the business.
As an update to my comments above, I reviewed the liner notes in the
Best of Spirit CD re-issue yesterday, and Ed Cassidy commented that Randy
was in fact irritated by it,
did consider it a rip-off way back then, but Ed advised him to try to let it go (the anger).
I still suspect a major issue was trying to build a viable case, and finding a lawyer willing to take it on.
Ed Cassidy was Randy's stepfather, a trusted figure, and had a LOT of professional performing experience in the biz before joining his stepson in founding Spirit, and I suspect he saw it as a futile case back then, according to the customs of the time, and advised Randy so.
I just found some corroboration of that on Wiki, on their "Stairway to Heaven" page:
"In May 2014, Spirit's bassist Mark Andes, and a trust acting on behalf of California (who died in 1997), filed a copyright infringement suit against Led Zeppelin and injunction against the "release of the album containing the song" in an attempt to obtain a writing credit for the deceased guitarist.[27] A lack of sufficient resources was cited as one of the reasons that Spirit’s members and their survivors did not file the suit earlier. A friend of California's mother explained: "Nobody had any money, and they thought the statute of limitations was done", adding, "It will be nice if Randy got the credit". If the Spirit lawsuit had been successful, past royalties earned by the song—estimated at more than US$550 million—would not have been part of the settlement, but the publisher and composers may have been entitled to a share of the future profits."[28][29]
So, even though I do actually believe "it's not true", I still get why it took so long.
And don't get me wrong, I don't mean to sound like I'm arguing, but your understandable question gave me an opportunity to point out this was nowhere near as much of a money grab as one might suspect, if one didn't look a little deeper.
(And assuming Wiki's recap of the damages sought is accurate)
You know what the real tragedy is here?
Randy California's kid doesn't have a father.