AP – 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, 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 USD20 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 violated their copyright by incorporating key elements from it.
After hearing from two experts for each side, Ramírez Almadani agreed with the defense, who argued that the writers employed common Christmas cliches that existed prior to both songs, and that Carey’s song utilised them differently. She states that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the songs are 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 defendants’ attorney fees.
Defense attorneys and publicists for Carey did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Carey and Afanasieff have had their own public disagreement — though not legally — over who wrote how much of the song. However, the case made them at least temporary allies.
