Judge ‘Inclined’ to Rule in Mariah Carey’s Favor in ‘All I Want for Christmas’ Copyright Lawsuit
More than two years since Mariah Carey was hit with legal action for allegedly stealing her perennial holiday hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You”, a California federal judge has said she feels “inclined” to grant Carey’s request for the motion to be dismissed.
As Rolling Stone reports, Judge Mónica Ramírez Almadani said at a Thursday court hearing that she was leaning toward dismissing the case, in which Vince Vance (real name Andy Stone) claims Carey’s seasonal blockbuster infringes upon his 1989 song of the same name.
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The legal saga dates back to the summer of 2022, when Vance first filed his copyright lawsuit. After dropping his initial case, he refiled the lawsuit last year with the same basic accusations, claiming the super star had “palmed off” his song as her own with an “incredulous origin story.”
“Her hubris knowing no bounds, even her co-credited songwriter doesn’t believe the story she has spun,” Vance’s lawyers wrote at the time. “This is simply a case of actionable infringement.”
The new lawsuit went into further details about the similarities than the original case, noting “unique linguistic structure” and specific musical elements, and claiming it’s a “greater than 50% clone of Vance’s original work”.
This past August, Carey’s legal team requested the lawsuit be dropped, noting that Vance’s claims fail the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal’s “extrinsic test for substantial similarity in protectable expression” — essentially arguing that any similarities between the two songs are coincidental.
At Thursday’s hearing, Judge Almadani said she was “inclined” to grant that request, according to the Rolling Stone report. The judge also said she was “seriously considering” granting a related motion filed by Carey’s team requesting sanctions against the plaintiffs for what is alleged to be a “frivolous” filing.
In his argument, Gerald P. Fox, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, noted it is “not required” they show the song is “identical” or “virtual plagiarism”, but rather that only “a certain arrangement of notes has to be unique, or the melody, or any aspect of the composition that’s copied or similar”.
Carey’s lawyer, Peter Anderson, argued that the similarities that have been identified by musicologists hired by the plaintiffs amount to phrases such as “Santa Claus” and “mistletoe” – lyrics which Carey’s team have claimed are public domain.
“These are random similarities. Five or so Christmas tropes that make these Christmas songs,” Anderson claimed. “Importantly, there are eight or nine other Christmas tropes in their work that don’t appear in ours. And eight or nine in ours that don’t appear in theirs.”
Judge Almadani has not yet issued a ruling on the case, and has not indicated when a ruling is expected.
First released in October 1994 as the first single from Carey’s Merry Christmas album, “All I Want for Christmas is You” is one of the most popular holiday songs in history. For the past four years, it has re-charted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during the holiday season.
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