A judge has ruled the singer Mariah Carey did not infringe on the festive song “All I want for Christmas is You.”
A country music singer Andy Stone had dragged Mariah Carey to court in November 2023, for copyright claims for her 1994 Christmas colossus ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’. Stone who also geos by the stage name Vince Vance filed for a $20 million suit in a Los Angeles federal court.
Judge Mónica Ramírez Almadani granted Carey’s request for summary judgment, giving her and co-writer and co-defendant Walter Afanasieff a victory without going to trial.
Stone’ suit said “’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.” It highlighted an “overwhelming likelihood” Carey had heard the song and infringed copyright by taking significant elements from it.
“If you look at both songs, you can see that about 50 per cent of the words are the same, in almost the same order. I think it’s a pretty strong claim,” the plaintiff’s lawyer, Douglas M. Schmidt, previously said.
Judge Monica Ramirez Almadini ruled that Stone’s lawyers had not “met their burden of showing” that the two songs were “substantially similar”.
The judge added that Stone and his lawyers should now face sanctions for filing “frivolous” arguments, including “vague and incomprehensible mixtures of factual assertions and conclusions, subjective opinions and other irrelevant evidence”.
They have also been instructed to pay Carey’s legal bills for the case.
