{"id":4823,"date":"2025-03-21T08:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T08:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/mariah-carey-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you-lawsuit-dismissed\/"},"modified":"2025-03-21T08:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T08:42:10","slug":"mariah-carey-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you-lawsuit-dismissed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/mariah-carey-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you-lawsuit-dismissed\/","title":{"rendered":"Mariah Carey ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ Lawsuit Dismissed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tMariah Carey<\/a> has won a federal court ruling dismissing a copyright lawsuit over her perennial holiday classic \u201cAll I Want for Christmas is You\u201d \u2013 a decision that cited an expert who said the songs mostly just shared \u201cChristmas song clich\u00e9s.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a ruling issued Wednesday, Judge M\u00f3nica Ram\u00edrez Almadani<\/strong> rejected allegations from songwriter Vince Vance<\/strong> that Carey and others had stolen key elements of her Christmas blockbuster from his 1989 song of the same name.<\/p>\n

\n\tRuling that Vance had failed to show that the songs were similar enough to violate copyright law, the judge cited analysis by a musicologist who said the two tracks were \u201cvery different songs\u201d that shared only \u201ccommonplace Christmas song clich\u00e9s\u201d that had been used in many earlier tracks.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPlaintiffs have not met their burden of showing that [the songs by] Carey and Vance are substantially similar under the extrinsic test,\u201d Ram\u00edrez Almadani wrote, using the legal term for how courts assess such allegations.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe judge not only tossed out Vance\u2019s case, but also ruled that he and his lawyers should be punished for filing \u201cfrivolous\u201d arguments. Calling it \u201cegregious\u201d conduct that aimed to \u201ccause unnecessary delay and needlessly increase the costs of litigation,\u201d the judge ordered that Vance and his lawyers to repay the legal bills Carey incurred defending those arguments.<\/p>\n

\n\tVance (real name Andy Stone) first sued Carey in 2022, claiming \u201cAll I Want\u201d infringed the copyrights to a 1989 song of the exact same name recorded by his Vince Vance and the Valiants. Vance claimed that the earlier track received \u201cextensive airplay\u201d during the 1993 holiday season \u2014 a year before Carey released her now-better-known hit.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCarey has \u2026 palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own,\u201d Vance wrote in his latest complaint. \u201cHer hubris knowing no bounds, even her co-credited songwriter doesn\u2019t believe the story she has spun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tVance\u2019s allegations were a big deal because Carey\u2019s song is big business. The 1994 blockbuster, which became even more popular after it was featured in the 2003 holiday rom-com Love Actually<\/em>, has re-taken the top spot on the Hot 100 for six straight years and earned a whopping $8.5 million in global revenue in 2022.<\/p>\n

\n\tCarey\u2019s attorneys asked the judge to end the case last year, arguing that the two songs shared only generic similarities that are firmly in the public domain \u2013 including basic Christmas terminology and a simple message that\u2019s been used in \u201clegions of Christmas songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe claimed similarities are an unprotectable jumble of elements: a title and hook phrase used by many earlier Christmas songs, other commonplace words, phrases, and Christmas tropes like \u2018Santa Claus\u2019 and \u2018mistletoe,\u2019 and a few unprotectable pitches and chords randomly scattered throughout these completely different songs,\u201d Carey\u2019s attorneys wrote at the time.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Wednesday\u2019s ruling, Ram\u00edrez Almadani granted that motion by endorsing two reports from musicologists hired by Carey\u2019s lawyers that strongly rejected Vance\u2019s allegations. In one report, New York University professor Lawrence Ferrara testified that he had found \u201cat least 19 songs\u201d that incorporated the same lyrical idea as \u201cAll I Want\u201d that had been released prior to Vance\u2019s track.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[Vance] and [Carey] in their entirety are very different songs and the only element of similarity is the use of a common lyrical idea and Christmas song clich\u00e9s that were in common use prior to [Vance],\u201d Ferrara wrote in the report that the judge cited.<\/p>\n

\n\tVance\u2019s attorneys submitted their own expert reports supporting his allegations, but the judge rejected them as evidence \u2013 saying that one was \u201cnot based on sufficient facts or data\u201d and was \u201cnot the product of reliable principles and methods\u201d as required by existing legal precedents.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeither side immediately returned requests for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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