A lawsuit claiming Mariah Carey’s inescapable holiday hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You” infringed on a prior song is unfounded and should be dismissed, the star’s lawyer argued Thursday in a California courtroom.
The federal judge overseeing the case said she was “inclined” to side with the Queen of Christmas. The judge also said she was “seriously considering” granting Carey’s related motion for sanctions against plaintiffs Andy Stone and Troy Powers over an alleged “frivolous” filing. Ultimately, U.S. District Court Judge Mónica Ramírez Almadani declined to issue an immediate ruling at the hearing in Downtown Los Angeles.
Stone, a country musician also known as Vince Vance, and his co-writer Powers filed their underlying $20 million lawsuit last November. They alleged Carey’s 1994 holiday anthem is a “derivative” of their 1988 version of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” in terms of lyrics, melody, harmonic language, and rhythm. Carey and her lawyers disputed this.
“It’s not required that we show everything is identical, or that it’s virtual plagiarism. Only a certain arrangement of notes has to be unique, or the melody, or any aspect of the composition that’s copied or similar,” Gerard P. Fox, the lawyer for Stone and Powers, said Thursday. He said two musicologists hired by plaintiffs found “substantial similarity” between the two songs.
“But it’s not just similarities, right? It’s protectable similarity,” the judge said, interrupting Fox’s argument.
When it was his turn to argue, Carey’s lawyer Peter Anderson said the lyrics identified by plaintiffs’ experts as “similar” included “Santa Claus” and “mistletoe.” In prior filings, he said those lyrics were public domain.
“These are random similarities. Five or so Christmas tropes that make these Christmas songs,” Anderson argued at the live hearing. “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.” He said the plaintiffs’ case boiled down to a handful of “indisputably unprotectable elements.”
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“They’re talking about four, non-consecutive pitches. Not notes — pitches. The notes are actually different, the metric placement is actually different,” Anderson said. “A sequence of pitches, even if they’re the same, is not protectable.” In terms of arrangement, Anderson said unprotected elements had to be arranged in the same way in both works for an arrangement claim. “Their own experts admit that they’re arranged differently,” he argued.
Fox disputed Anderson’s characterization. He said his experts found “substantial similarities” in the relevant tests of lyrics, chords, melody, and rhythm. The judge stopped him there. “I believe it’s undisputed that the chord progression in the hook is among the most common chord progressions in western music and has been a musical building block for centuries,” she said. “I’m not sure you dispute that.”
Fox said some aspects are common, but others are not. He said in the history of songwriting, “every single note has been used,” so the test boils down to “subtle” similarities “that become very relevant.”
“Don’t your very experts acknowledge that the songs select and arrange their element in different ways?” the judge pressed. Fox called that an “oversimplification,” saying his filings give evidence there was “copying.”
“I think that if you grant summary judgment on this case, it would be a reversible error,” Fox said. “There is so much that’s similar. It’s enough for a copyright infringement case.”
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The judge took the matter under submission without elaborating on when she expects to issue a ruling. Stone and Powers filed the pending lawsuit after previously dismissing the case in federal court in New Orleans because Louisiana was the wrong venue.
Carey’s motion for summary judgment also was filed on behalf of her co-songwriter, Walter Afanasieff, and corporate co-defendants Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Corp., and Sony Music Publishing.
“Like legions of Christmas songs before them, Vance’s and Carey’s lyrics include the idea of wanting someone for Christmas rather than presents or other trappings of Christmas,” the motion read. “But it is fundamental that copyright only protects expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves.”
The motion said the mentions of the Christmas tropes were different in each song. For instance, Stone’s song refers to “sleigh rides” and “silver bells” while Carey’s song refers to “sleigh bells,” the motion said. And while Carey’s song describes writing “a letter to Santa Claus,” Stone’s song says, “I won’t make a list and send it to the North Pole for Saint Nick,” it argued.
Stone, whose legal name is Andrew Franichevich, originally sued Carey in June 2022. He dismissed the complaint without prejudice a few months later, reserving his right to refile. According to the latest complaint, Stone and Powers believe Carey had access to their 1988 song because it purportedly received “extensive airplay” in 1993, and they performed it at the White House in 1994.
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Carey co-wrote and recorded her song before releasing it as the lead single for her Merry Christmas album in 1994. It quickly became a holiday staple, playing on heavy rotation each year at malls, parties, and sporting events around the world in the run-up to Christmas.
When Stone first filed his lawsuit in 2022, one expert said it could face an uphill battle considering there are at least 177 copyrighted works, many of them songs, with the title “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Deadline reported.
