Mariah Carey, accused of copyright infringement in her 1994 Christmas hit All I Want for Christmas is You, has won her case. A U.S. judge, Mónica Ramírez Almadani, rejected songwriter Adam Stone's claim that it lifted a song he wrote in 1989: the two merely shared "Christmas song clichés" already common to the genre, Almadani ruled.
Judge Almandi also ruled that Mr Stone and his lawyers should face sanctions for filing "frivolous" arguments, that included "vague… and incomprehensible mixtures of factual assertions and conclusions, subjective opinions, and other irrelevant evidence".
Stone claimed his song received a lot of airplay the Christmas before Carey's song was recorded; she wrote in her 2020 memoir that she'd composed much of it on a "cheap little Casio keyboard" while watching It's a Wonderful Life. The Carey song is a goldmine, earning "about $8.5 million (£6.6 million) every year" in royalties, the BBC reports.
His evidence was the shared title and key lyrics, references to Santa Claus and mistletoe—and the plaintive female vibes found by the court to have been a well-established cliche of Christmas music. A number of songs already had the "All I Want For Christmas Is You" line, for example. You may listen to his track here.
Previously:
• This song by George Harrison makes fun of the copyright infringement case he lost
• Bratz copyright lawsuit tossed
• Thierry Guetta, aka Mr. Brainwash sued for copyright infringement over Run DMC image
