US judge rules Mariah Carey didn’t steal All I Want For Christmas from other songwriters

A US FEDERAL judge has ruled that Mariah Carey did not steal her perennial seasonal hit All I Want for Christmas Is You from other songwriters.

Judge Monica Ramirez Almadani, sitting in in Los Angeles, granted Carey’s request for summary judgment, giving her and co-writer and co-defendant Walter Afanasieff a victory without going to trial.

In 2023, Andy Stone – who goes by the stage name Vince Vance – and Troy Powers filed the $20m (€18.5m) lawsuit alleging that Carey’s 1994 song, which has become a Christmas standard and annual streaming sensation, infringed the copyright of their country 1989 song with the same title.

Their lawyer Gerard P Fox said he was “disappointed” by the ruling.

He said judges at this level “nearly always now dismiss a music copyright case and… one must appeal to reverse and get the case to the jury”.

Fox added: “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 song “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” that Carey and Afanasieff had heard their song – which at one point reached No 31 on Billboard’s Hot Country chart – and infringed their copyright by taking significant elements from it.

After hearing from two experts for each side, Judge Ramirez Almadani agreed with those from the defence, who said the writers employed common Christmas cliches that existed before both songs, and that Carey’s song used them differently.

She said the plaintiffs had not met the burden of showing the songs are substantially similar.

The judge also ordered sanctions against the plaintiffs and their lawyers, saying their suit and subsequent filings were frivolous and that the lawyers “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’ legal fees.

Carey’s Christmas colossus has become an even bigger hit in recent years than it was in the 1990s.

It has topped Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for the past six years in a row by airplay, sales and streaming.

Carey and Afanasieff have had their own public disagreement – though not one that has gone to court – over who wrote how much of the song, but the case made them at least temporary allies.