One of the reasons why it has taken this long is that Randy California was batshit insane. Tough for a lawyer to get a solid deposition from a guy like that.
Coupled with the fact that Page may never have written an original tune in his life, it's hard to build a big groundswell of support for the cause.

There was a WatchMojo top ten which featured this appropriation yesterday, and it was arguably the most obvious rip off aside from Bittersweet Symphony (and yes, the Verve got fucked on that undeservedly)

The descending guitar figure is pretty common. What makes the intro for Stairway unique is the change at the end of the figure--and neither the Spirit song nor the Crow song have that element.

I lack outrage on this one...but, then again, I never thought that George Harrison should have had to pay out for "My Sweet Lord"...and I never thought that the connection between Radiohead and the Hollies was actionably strong either.

I agree with number three.

Ditto on 3. I just don't hear it. Sort of similar but I just don't hear the same song three ways.

None of these people invented Rock N Roll, so for them to pretend like any of them truly deserve millions of dollars is insane. The entire format for rock for laid out for these guys before they started playing, they just put two and two together in a beautiful way, and because of business, luck and aesthetic, Zeppelin was able to profit off of it, kudos. How about the thousands of blues artists who are forgotten or unknown who actually wrote all these songs?

And even though rock isn't my favorite genre (at all) pretty much any Zep song is better than those two "thoughts," and "Taurus."

Seriously. To go from "there's some sort of haunting similarity I can't put my finger on, that might have stuck in songwriter B's subconscious" at some point to "You owe me teh monies!" is such a stretch as to boggle the mind. I direct you to Alan Moore's proposition of Ideaspace.