{"id":5567,"date":"2025-04-30T18:19:36","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T18:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/mariah-carey-christmas-case-plus-diddy-50-cent-more-music-law-news\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T18:19:36","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T18:19:36","slug":"mariah-carey-christmas-case-plus-diddy-50-cent-more-music-law-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/mariah-carey-christmas-case-plus-diddy-50-cent-more-music-law-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Mariah Carey Christmas Case, Plus Diddy, 50 Cent & More Music Law News"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tThis is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tThis week: Mariah Carey wants payback after winning a lawsuit over \u201cAll I Want for Christmas is You\u201d; Diddy\u2019s trial judge says jurors can see an infamous surveillance video; 50 Cent sues to stop the release of a movie he stars in; and much more.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE BIG STORY: Mariah\u2019s Christmas Revenge\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tTo paraphrase a legendary line from HBO\u2019s The Wire<\/em><\/a>: \u201cIf you come at the queen, you best not miss.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA month after the Queen of Christmas defeated a copyright lawsuit over her holiday classic \u201cAll I Want for Christmas is You,\u201d Mariah Carey and other defendants in the case are now seeking legal revenge \u2013 demanding that the songwriter who filed the action repay the legal bills they spent defending it.<\/p>\n

\n\tVince Vance claimed that \u201cAll I Want\u201d ripped off his own earlier song of the same name, but a federal judge tossed the case out last month, citing experts who said the songs shared mostly just \u201ccommonplace Christmas song clich\u00e9s.\u201d The judge even said that some of Vance\u2019s filings were so \u201cfrivolous\u201d that he\u2019d need to reimburse Carey and others the money the spent beating them.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a motion earlier this month, Carey and others argued that Vance and his lawyers must hand over a whopping $180,000 to pay for those baseless filings. They said they had been \u201cperfectly justified\u201d in paying high rates to teams of elite lawyers because Vance had been seeking drastic remedies, including $20 million in damages and the \u201cdestruction of all copies\u201d of the song.<\/p>\n

\n\tVance\u2019s attorneys responded last week, arguing that Carey\u2019s demand was \u201csimply not reasonable\u201d and that his lawsuit, while unsuccessful, had been a legitimate use of the court system. Saying the award should not exceed $70,000 at the very most, they warned that the full fine could bankrupt an \u201celderly man\u201d who does not have \u201cvast resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe plaintiff is elder and living off his music catalog and some touring,\u201d the songwriter\u2019s attorneys wrote. \u201cOne artist should not push another artist to the brink of a financial collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWill the judge aim to deter future bad copyright cases by punishing Vance? Or be swayed by his pleas for mercy? Stay tuned at Billboard<\/em> in the months ahead to find out.<\/p>\n

\n\t\tOther top stories this week\u2026\t<\/h3>\n

\n\tDIDDY TRIAL LOOMS <\/strong>\u2013 With jury selection set to begin next week, a federal judge issued a key pre-trial ruling that an infamous 2016 surveillance video of Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs assaulting his former girlfriend Cassie Ventura in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel can be played for jurors at his sex trafficking trial. Diddy\u2019s attorneys had argued the clip has been deceptively edited and would \u201cunfairly confuse and mislead the jury\u201d; prosecutors blasted that argument as a \u201cdesperate\u201d attempt by Combs to avoid \u201ccrushing\u201d evidence of his crimes.<\/p>\n

\n\tJAY-Z LIBEL SUIT <\/strong>\u2013 The star\u2019s unnamed rape accuser and her attorney Tony Buzbee asked a federal judge to dismiss the rapper\u2019s defamation lawsuit against them, arguing they cannot be sued over claims they made as part of a court case. They cited the \u201cfair report privilege\u201d \u2013 a legal doctrine that largely immunizes legal proceedings from libel liability. And they said that a headline-grabbing NBC News interview, in which she echoed her claims about Jay-Z, was protected under the same legal logic.<\/p>\n

\n\tMOVIE BATTLE <\/strong>\u2013 50 Cent filed a lawsuit aimed at blocking the release of an upcoming horror movie called SkillHouse in which he plays the starring role, claiming he never signed a final agreement and had not been paid. The rapper (Curtis Jackson) says he filmed his scenes because he trusted that a deal would eventually be reached, but it never was: \u201cNevertheless, defendants have billed Jackson as the star and producer of the film [and] have shamelessly and deceptively marketed the film as a \u201950 Cent Movie\u2019 and \u2018produced by 50 Cent,\u2019 when it is nothing of the sort.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSHADY SETTLEMENT <\/strong>\u2013 Eminem\u2019s publisher reached a settlement to end a copyright lawsuit it filed against a Ford dealership near his hometown of Detroit \u2013 a case that claimed the company used the rapper\u2019s \u201cLose Yourself\u201d in TikTok videos that warned viewers they would \u201conly get one shot\u201d to buy a special edition truck. Eminem doesn\u2019t own Eight Mile Style and was not involved in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\n\tCOOKIE INFRINGEMENT <\/strong>\u2013 Warner Music Group filed a copyright lawsuit against cookie chain Crumbl, claiming the Utah-based company used more than 159 songs by artists such as Lizzo, Mariah Carey, Ariana Grande and Beyonc\u00e9 in TikTok and Instagram videos without permission. The case against Crumbl is the latest in a rash of lawsuits accusing commercial brands of using easily-available music in social media ads without the necessary synch licenses \u2013 cases that have targeted Marriott, NBA teams, Chili\u2019s, and the University of Southern California.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5568,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2943,294,950,2944,296,153,2942,593,310],"class_list":["post-5567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-carey","tag-case","tag-cent","tag-christmas","tag-diddy","tag-law","tag-mariah","tag-music","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}