A songwriter has waited 28 years to file a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement against Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You.
Mariah Carey and her co-writer Walter Afansieff are named in a lawsuit by songwriter Andy Stone, who claims his 1989 song “All I Want for Christmas Is You” by Vince Vance & the Valiants is being infringed.
Stone claims his song received extensive airplay during the 1993 holiday season. In 1994, Carey released her version of the song, which has become a holiday classic. He is asking for $20 million in damages. Stone claims Carey and Afansieff “intentionally engaged in a campaign to infringe” his copyright on the work.
It will be difficult for him to convince the court that his claims are valid.
According to Pamela Koslyn, an attorney specialising in music and intellectual property rights, there are 177 works, many of them musical compositions, with the title “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”
Koslyn noted that she would have a different answer if all of the lyrics were “substantially similar” to Carey’s version.
“Song titles aren’t entitled to copyright protection,” Koslyn added. “That’s why there are 177 works using the same title. An even more popular title is “My Baby,” which has 4860 works registered with the Copyright Office. And that doesn’t even count “common law” (unregistered) works using the same title.”
The Carey version of the song has over 1 billion streams on Spotify alone. Last year, it became the first song to be a No. 1 hit in three separate runs on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart.
At best, this lawsuit will make inquisitive people stream Stone’s version to see if he has a case (I’m not tempted), thus providing him with some money. However, if he loses, he will have a hefty sum to payout to Carey and Afansieff.
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