Mariah Carey has won a federal court ruling dismissing a copyright lawsuit over her perennial holiday classic “All I Want for Christmas is You” – a decision that cited an expert who said the songs mostly just shared “Christmas song clichés.”
In a ruling issued Wednesday, Judge Mónica Ramírez Almadani rejected allegations from songwriter Vince Vance that Carey and others had stolen key elements of her Christmas blockbuster from his 1989 song of the same name.
Ruling 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 “very different songs” that shared only “commonplace Christmas song clichés” that had been used in many earlier tracks.
“Plaintiffs have not met their burden of showing that [the songs by] Carey and Vance are substantially similar under the extrinsic test,” Ramírez Almadani wrote, using the legal term for how courts assess such allegations.
Related
Could Mariah Carey's Christmas Hit be the Song of the Century?
12/23/2024The judge not only tossed out Vance’s case, but also ruled that he and his lawyers should be punished for filing “frivolous” arguments. Calling it “egregious” conduct that aimed to “cause unnecessary delay and needlessly increase the costs of litigation,” the judge ordered that Vance and his lawyers to repay the legal bills Carey incurred defending those arguments.
Vance (real name Andy Stone) first sued Carey in 2022, claiming “All I Want” 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 “extensive airplay” during the 1993 holiday season — a year before Carey released her now-better-known hit.
“Carey has … palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own,” Vance wrote in his latest complaint. “Her hubris knowing no bounds, even her co-credited songwriter doesn’t believe the story she has spun.”
Vance’s allegations were a big deal because Carey’s song is big business. The 1994 blockbuster, which became even more popular after it was featured in the 2003 holiday rom-com Love Actually, 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.
Related
The 25 Most Popular Christmas Songs Released in the Last 25 Years, Ranked by Streams…
12/19/2024Carey’s 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 – including basic Christmas terminology and a simple message that’s been used in “legions of Christmas songs.”
“The 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 ‘Santa Claus’ and ‘mistletoe,’ and a few unprotectable pitches and chords randomly scattered throughout these completely different songs,” Carey’s attorneys wrote at the time.
In Wednesday’s ruling, Ramírez Almadani granted that motion by endorsing two reports from musicologists hired by Carey’s lawyers that strongly rejected Vance’s allegations. In one report, New York University professor Lawrence Ferrara testified that he had found “at least 19 songs” that incorporated the same lyrical idea as “All I Want” that had been released prior to Vance’s track.
“[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 clichés that were in common use prior to [Vance],” Ferrara wrote in the report that the judge cited.
Vance’s attorneys submitted their own expert reports supporting his allegations, but the judge rejected them as evidence – saying that one was “not based on sufficient facts or data” and was “not the product of reliable principles and methods” as required by existing legal precedents.
Neither side immediately returned requests for comment.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Mariah Carey Wins Ruling Dismissing Copyright Lawsuit Over ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ )
Also on site :
- Banana Republic Factory Is Selling a Breezy $70 Linen Top for Just $34, and It's Available in 5 Colors
- Ivy League's tenured complicity in deportation of Mahmoud Khalil
- French scientist denied entry to US after officials find ‘hateful’ texts about Trump on his phone