A federal judge in Los Angeles has ruled that Mariah Carey did not steal her perennial megahit All I Want for Christmas Is You from other songwriters.
Judge Mónica Ramírez Almadani granted Carey’s request for summary judgment on Wednesday (local time), giving her and co-writer and co-defendant Walter Afanasieff a victory without going to trial.
In 2023, songwriters Andy Stone of Louisiana — who goes by the stage name Vince Vance — and Troy Powers of Tennessee filed the $20 million (NZ$34.7 million) lawsuit alleging that Carey’s 1994 song, which has since become a holiday standard and annual streaming sensation, infringed the copyright of their country 1989 song with the same title.
Their lawyer Gerard P Fox said he’s “disappointed” in an email to The Associated Press.
Fox said it is his experience that judges at this level “nearly always now dismiss a music copyright case and that one must appeal to reverse and get the case to the jury. My client will make a decision shortly on whether to appeal. We filed based on the opinions of two esteemed musicologists who teach at great colleges.”
Stone and Powers’ suit said their All I Want For Christmas Is You contains a unique linguistic structure where a person, disillusioned with expensive gifts and seasonal comforts, wants to be with their loved one, and accordingly writes a letter to Santa Claus.”
They said there was an “overwhelming likelihood” Carey and Afanasieff had heard their song — which at one point reached No 31 on Billboard’s Hot Country chart — and infringed their copyright by taking significant elements from it.
After hearing from two experts for each side, Ramírez Almadani agreed with those from the defence, who said the writers employed common Christmas cliches that existed prior to both songs and that Carey’s song used them differently. She said the plaintiffs had not met the burden of showing that the songs were substantially similar.
Ramírez Almadani also ordered sanctions against the plaintiffs and their lawyers, saying their suit and subsequent filings were frivolous and that the plaintiffs’ attorneys “made no reasonable effort to ensure that the factual contentions asserted have evidentiary support”.
She said they must pay at least part of the defendant’s attorney fees.
Defence attorneys and publicists for Carey did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Carey’s Christmas colossus has become an even bigger hit in recent years than it was in the 1990s. It has reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart the past six years in a row — measuring the most popular songs each week — not just the holiday-themed — by airplay, sales and streaming.
Carey and Afanasieff have had their own public disagreement — though not one that’s gone to court — over who wrote how much of the song. But the case made them at least temporary allies.
