Mariah Carey says the $20 million copyright infringement lawsuit targeting her massive holiday hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You” should be wrapped up in her favor without a trial. In a new motion for summary judgment filed Monday, the singer says her expert’s evaluation of her 1994 yuletide anthem found that it shares no “substantial similarity” with any protectable elements of the 1988 song of the same title written by co-plaintiffs Andy Stone, a country musician known as Vince Vance, and his co-writer Troy Powers. Predictably, experts working for Stone and Powers determined the opposite.
A hearing on the matter is set for October 31. “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,” Carey’s new motion for a court judgment in her favor reads. “But it is fundamental that copyright only protects expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves.
” The lawyers representing Carey, her co-writer Walter Afanasieff and corporate defendants Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Corp., Sony Music Publishing and Kobalt Music Publishing further argue in the new filing that the title and repeating hook “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is a “commonplace” Christmas phrase not invented by Vance. “At least 13 songs predating Vance use that phrase or a very similar one,” the new filing in federal court in Los Angeles reads.
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