Mariah Carey has been cleared of any wrongdoing in the lawsuit over her famous festive hit All I Want For Christmas Is You.
In November 2023, country singer, Andy Stone aka Vince Vance, filed a lawsuit against Carey. He claimed that Carey's hit, which arrived in 1994, had infringed the copyright of his original 1989 track of the same name. Stone also alleged that his track received "extensive airplay", a year prior to Carey's hit being released.
After an original complaint was dropped, a new suit was filed last year, which alleged that: “Carey has without licensing, palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own". More on this here.
Now, it was ruled that Andy Stone's legal team had not "met their burden of showing" that the two songs were "substantially similar".
In her ruling, Judge Monica Ramirez Almandini pointed to the expert testimony which stated that the two songs shared "Christmas song clichés", rather than breached copyright laws.
She also stated that Andy Stone and his legal team should now face certain sanctions for submitting what she called: “frivolous” arguments, including “vague…and incomprehensible mixtures of factual assertions and conclusions, subjective opinions and other irrelevant evidence”.
The judge also ruled that they should pay Carey's legal bills in this case.
