Mariah Carey Wins Ruling Dismissing Copyright Lawsuit Over ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’

Mariah Carey defeated a lawsuit claiming she illegally copied elements of her holiday megahit “All I Want for Christmas Is You” from a country song of the same name.

On March 19 in a Los Angeles Court, Judge Monica Almadani ruled that the lawsuit claiming that Carey, 55, copied Andy Stone’s 1989 country song of the same name, did not have enough evidence to prove Carey copied his song.

Originally filed in November 2023 by Stone and co-writer Troy Powers alleged “copyright infringement and unjust enrichment” over her chart-topping song. As per court documents obtained by PEOPLE, Carey’s version of the song imitated the “compositional structure” of Stone’s song.

“Defendants knew or should have known that ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ could not be used in a musical work by Defendants without a license and/or songwriting credit, as is customary practice in the music industry,” the original court document said.

Stone and Powers were seeking $20 million in damages and a trial by jury.

According to court documents from the March 19 ruling, “there is an absence of evidence to support the nonmoving party’s case” that Carey’s 1994 song copied Stone’s (who performs as Vince Vance and is identified in the lawsuit as such) song.

The documents also acknowledge that the phrase “all I want for Christmas is you” did not originate from Stone.

In an analysis of the two songs’ lyrics, Dr. Lawrence Ferrara, musicologist and Professor of Music and Director Emeritus of all studies in Music and the Performing Art at New York University, concluded that the lyrical similarities between both songs are “fragmentary, used with different lyrical phrases, arranged differently, and . . . in common use.”

Ferrera also noted that the versions by “[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” Stone releasing his song.

The songs were deemed different enough in their melody, harmony, rhythm and lyrics to not infringe on copyright.

Stone and Powers previously filed a similar lawsuit in Louisiana for $20 million against the “Always Be My Baby” singer in June 2022 again alleging “copyright infringement and unjust enrichment” but dropped it that November.

Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” debuted in 1994 on her album Merry Christmas.

The tune is an annual chart-topper during the holiday season. The record-breaking festive song has been certified diamond by the RIAA with over 10 million copies sold and has been streamed over two billion times on Spotify as of December 2024 — the first holiday song to do so.

“This is beyond incredible. I’m honored to have ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ be the first holiday track on Spotify to reach 2 Billion Streams! I’m so grateful to all Spotify listeners around the world who’ve made the song part of their holiday tradition year after year,” Carey told PEOPLE at the time.

via: People

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