Menu
Mariah Carey Wins “Christmas” Present, as Miley Cyrus Faces Mars Attack
June 23rd, 2025
As Variety notes,
Some of the most high-profile copyright infringement cases happen in the music industry, where the accusation of plagiarism is as nebulous as a concept can get. It happens sometimes by accident — an “unconscious borrowing” — and other times it’s on purpose, deemed a “musical homage.”
Recently, a judge dismissed a copyright suit involving Mariah Carey’s 1994 seasonal hit, “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
Carey’s song is a perennial Christmas favorite, retaking the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 music chart for six straight years. It reportedly earned $8.5 million in global revenue in 2022.
As the Guardian reported,
The country singer Vince Vance of the band Vince Vance & the Valiants previously alleged that Carey had copied the group’s 1988 Christmas tune of the same name. Vance, whose real name is Adam Stone, accused Carey of exploiting his “popularity” and “style”.
A federal judge rejected the claims, citing evidence from a musicologist that the songs only shared “commonplace Christmas song cliches” found in many other songs. Carey’s attorneys previously argued that the language in Vance’s song had been used in “legions of Christmas songs.”
A New York University professor testified that “at least 19 songs” used the same musical “ideas” before Vance’s song.
The judge found that Vance failed to show that his song and Carey’s were “substantially similar under the extrinsic test” for copyright infringement.
As jury instructions for the 9th Circuit explain,
the court employs a two-part test for determining whether one work is substantially similar to another:
[A plaintiff] must prove both substantial similarity under the “extrinsic test” and substantial similarity under the “intrinsic test.” The “extrinsic test” is an objective comparison of specific expressive elements. The “intrinsic test” is a subjective comparison that focuses on whether the ordinary, reasonable audience would find the works substantially similar in the total concept and feel of the works.
In copyright cases involving music, protection for original expression doesn’t extend to ideas, concepts, common or trite musical elements, or commonplace elements firmly rooted in a genre’s tradition.
The court also found Vance and his lawyer caused “unnecessary delay” and “needlessly” increased the costs of litigation, including through “incomprehensible mixtures of factual assertions and conclusions, subjective opinions, and other irrelevant evidence.”
The judge thus ordered Vance to pay Carey’s legal costs, which were doubtless substantial.
In another music copyright case, Reuters reported that pop star Miley Cyrus lost an attempt to dismiss a federal lawsuit alleging that her 2023 hit song “Flowers” illegally copied the 2013 hit song “When I Was Your Man” by Bruno Mars.
The case was brought by Tempo Music Investments, LLC, an investment company that purchases and owns the rights to songs.
Tempo claimed it acquired an ownership share of the copyright in “When I Was Your Man” in 2020 when it bought the catalog of a co‐author of the song, Philip Lawrence.
Cyrus and other defendants claimed that Tempo lacked standing to sue for copyright infringement.
Under 17 U.S.C. § 501(b), only “[t]he legal or beneficial owner of an exclusive right under [the] copyright” has standing to sue for infringement.”
The co-authors of a joint work are co-owners of the copyright in that work, and are treated as tenants in common, “each owning a share of the undivided whole.”
Each co‐owner has an independent right to use and exploit the copyright and, therefore, cannot be liable to the other co-owners for infringement.
A co‐owner of a copyright of a joint work may transfer that ownership interest without obtaining permission from the other co‐owners.
A co‐owner may also sue a third party for infringement without joining the other co‐owners.
The court noted that the exclusive rights of a copyright “may be chopped up and owned separately, and each separate owner of a subdivided exclusive right may sue to enforce that owned portion of an exclusive right, no matter how small.”
However, said the court,
a co‐owner cannot grant an exclusive license to a third party without the consent of all co‐owners, because a co‐owner cannot transfer more than he or she owns.
The defendants contended that Lawrence couldn’t have unilaterally made Tempo an owner or co‐owner of an exclusive right to the song because Lawrence didn’t exclusively own any right.
In the order, the court explained,
Songwriter Defendants’ misunderstanding of the Ninth Circuit’s precedent seems to stem from the use of the word “exclusive.” The heart of the Songwriter Defendants’ arguments is that a co‐owner cannot transfer an exclusive right because a co‐owner is not the exclusive owner of the rights. This is incorrect. Ownership of “exclusive rights” is not to be conflated with “exclusive ownership” of rights. The “exclusive rights” are what is owned collectively by the co‐owners. Each co‐owner of a copyright owns an interest in the exclusive rights that make up a copyright. These exclusive rights are exclusive to the co‐owners collectively as against the rest of the world. The Copyright Act requires an ownership interest in an exclusive right for standing to sue, not exclusive ownership of the copyright rights.
The court explained that Tempo alleges that Lawrence transferred his entire ownership interest to Tempo, not that he attempted to transfer an exclusive license to Tempo.
The court also pointed out the problem with the defendants’ argument:
If, as Songwriter Defendants’ arguments seem to suggest, a co‐owner’s right to sue for infringement is lost upon transfer, then if all original co‐authors transferred their interest, the copyright could never be enforced.
Also, said the court,
such a limitation would dimmish the value of jointly owned copyrights, because buyers would be less interested in purchasing a copyright that they cannot enforce, thereby disincentivizing co‐authorship and collaboration in works. This would undermine Congress’s intent in expressly allowing for the divisibility and alienability of copyrights and its acknowledgment of co‐ownership of joint works.
Accordingly, the Court found that Tempo, as a co‐owner of the copyright of “When I Was Your Man,” had standing
Categories: Copyright