Legal
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This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Taylor Swift’s legal options after Donald Trump falsely claims she endorsed him; a guilty plea for YoungBoy Never Broke Again on a federal gun charge; Mariah Carey’s arguments to dismiss a copyright case over “All I Want For Christmas”; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Will Taylor Protect Her … Reputation?
When Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump posted AI-generated images to social media that falsely suggested Taylor Swift had endorsed him, many Swifties and Democrats asked the same question all at once: Can she sue him? After all, Taylor is no MAGA fan. In 2020, she urged her legions of fans to vote Trump out of office, blasting him for “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism” and endorsing then-candidate Joe Biden. The superstar hasn’t endorsed anybody yet in 2024, but you can be pretty certain that it’s not going to be Trump. But there it was: an AI-generated image of Swift herself, dressed up as Uncle Sam in the style of a World War II-era recruiting poster, bearing a clear message: “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.” At the top of the post, Trump himself responded to the apparent endorsement: “I accept!” Can Taylor file a lawsuit? On what grounds? And should she do so? Go read our full story here to find out.
Other top stories this week…
YOUNGBOY GUILTY PLEA – YoungBoy Never Broke Again (aka NBA YoungBoy) notified a judge that he would plead guilty to a federal gun charge that has seen him held under house arrest for more than two years while awaiting trial. But the deal won’t resolve dozens of newer charges in Utah over claims that he ran a “large scale prescription fraud ring” while living under house arrest. CLASS DISMISSED – Adidas AG won a ruling tossing out a class action that claimed the company violated U.S. securities laws by failing to warn shareholders about internal offensive behavior from Ye (formerly Kanye West) before the company split with him in 2022. Though the judge said she did not condone his “erratic, inappropriate, and antisemitic” behavior and said it was “troubling” that it had happened at Adidas, she ruled that the company’s actions didn’t rise to securities fraud: “The question before this court is not whether to admonish Ye or hold Adidas morally accountable for Ye’s conduct.” SAMPLE SETTLEMENT – Elsewhere in Kanye-world, the rapper reached a settlement in a copyright lawsuit that accused him of using an uncleared sample from the pioneering rap group Boogie Down Productions in his song “Life of the Party.” The case was one of more than a dozen such cases he’s faced during his career, including a high-profile battle with the estate of Donna Summer that settled earlier this year. GRACELAND SCAM – A Missouri woman named Lisa Jeanine Findley was arrested and charged with attempting to defraud the family of Elvis Presley and steal their ownership interest in Graceland. The alleged scheme is what led to the bizarre, largely unexplained incident that saw the famed Memphis mansion seemingly put up for auction earlier this summer. NO MORE YSL TRIAL? As Young Thug’s gang trial drags on in Atlanta, a Republican challenger to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis now says she will end the case if she’s elected. In a statement, Courtney Kramer said the trial against Thug’s YSL was designed to “bring fame” to Willis rather than “bring justice to the community,” and that it’s resulted in “endless amounts of taxpayer dollars” being spent “on a prosecution that is based almost entirely on witnesses with little to no credibility.” HIPGNOSIS SUES MANILOW – Hipgnosis Song Fund filed a lawsuit against Barry Manilow in U.K. court over bonus payments relating to its acquisition of the singer’s catalog four years ago, accusing the singer of breach of contract and other wrongdoing over a deal that saw the company buy the rights to 917 songs including “Mandy,” “Looks Like We Made It” and many others. CHRISTMAS CLASH – Mariah Carey asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit claiming she stole her perennial holiday classic “All I Want for Christmas is You” from an earlier song of the same name by songwriter Vince Vance. The star’s lawyers argued that the two songs share only “an unprotectable jumble of elements,” including “a title and hook phrase used by many earlier Christmas songs,” a series of “Christmas tropes” and other rudimental elements “scattered throughout these completely different songs.” RONDO DRUG PLEA – Rapper Quando Rondo pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to possess and distribute marijuana, resolving an indictment issued in December that saddled him with more extensive charges involving conspiracy to sell methamphetamine, fentanyl and cocaine. State gang and drug charges are still pending against him.
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Ye (formerly Kanye West) has reached a settlement in a copyright lawsuit that accused him of using an uncleared sample from the pioneering rap group Boogie Down Productions in his song “Life of the Party.”
In court documents filed Monday, attorneys for both sides agreed that Ye should be dismissed from the case, with each side to pay their own legal bills. No other terms of the agreement were disclosed publicly, and neither side immediately returned requests for comment.
The Boogie Down lawsuit was one of more than a dozen such cases that have been filed against Ye over claims of unlicensed sampling or interpolating during his prolific career. The controversial rapper has faced nine such infringement cases since 2019 alone, including a high-profile battle with estate of Donna Summer that settled earlier this year.
Filed in November 2022, the current lawsuit was lodged by Phase One Network, the group that owns Boogie Down’s copyrights, over allegations that Ye had used incorporated key aspects from the 1986 song “South Bronx” into “Life of the Party,” which was released on his 2021album Donda.
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Echoing several other sampling lawsuits against Ye, Phase One claimed that the rapper’s representatives had reached out to legally clear the use of the Boogie Down song – but then released it anyway when a deal was never struck.
“The communications confirmed that ‘South Bronx’ had been incorporated into the infringing track even though West had yet to obtain such license,” Phase One’s lawyers wrote. “Despite the fact that final clearance for use of ‘South Bronx’ in the infringing track was never authorized, the infringing track was nevertheless reproduced, sold, distributed, publicly performed and exploited.”
Last summer, attorneys for Ye fought back with an unusual argument: That Boogie Down founder KRS-One had publicly promised all future rappers that “you will not get sued” over sampling the group’s catalog. They cited a 2006 documentary called The Art of 16 Bars, in which KRS-One said “I give to all MCs my entire catalogue.”
Phase One later called that a “bizarre argument,” noting that, when the documentary was made, KRS-One didn’t actually own the music he was claiming to place in the public domain: “Movants cite to no law to support such a theory. KRS-One also could not have placed the Work in the public domain as he did not own it.”
Following Monday’s agreement, Ye and his Yeezy LLC will be dropped from the lawsuit but the case will continue against other several defendants, including the company behind the Stem Player platform on which the song was allegedly released.
The U.S. Department of Justice has refiled its historic anti-trust lawsuit against concert promoter Live Nation, with 10 additional states joining the effort to break up the company more than a decade after its 2010 merger with Ticketmaster.
The Attorneys General for Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah and Vermont were added to an amended complaint filed in New York’s Southern District on Monday (Aug. 19), bringing the total number of states participating in the lawsuit to 40 total, along with the District of Columbia.
“There is nothing new in the Amended Complaint,” a statement from Live Nation reads. “The lawsuit still won’t solve the issues fans care about relating to ticket prices, service fees, and access to in-demand shows. We look forward to sharing more facts as the case progresses.”
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The amended lawsuit re-alleges that Live Nation and Ticketmaster acted like a monopoly and violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act by using illegal tactics to expand its concert promotion business and management of amphitheaters. The new complaint also includes new details about how Live Nation allegedly expanded its ticketing business after it merged with Ticketmaster in 2009, including information about the company’s controversial relationship with arena developer and operator Oak View Group (OVG). Founded in 2015 by Tim Leiweke and music manager Irving Azoff, Oak View Group manages nearly 200 venues and relies on Live Nation to bring major tours to its concert facilities, which includes such top U.S. venues as Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, the Moody Center in Austin and UBS Arena in Belmont, N.Y.
As the building manager’s main representative, OVG is supposed to manage the competitive process for selecting a venue’s ticketing contract, but the complaint alleges that OVG is obligated to “advocate for exclusive agreements with Ticketmaster for more than 100 venues Oak View Group manages” — which the lawsuit claims essentially “locks those venues into long-term exclusive Ticketmaster agreements.” The agreement, the government argues, unfairly prevents third-party competitors from entering the ticketing space while compensating OVG with a substantial “incentive payment” from Live Nation plus significant annual payments.
In fairness, OVG’s competitor AEG — which also competes with Live Nation for concert promotion and ticketing — also accepted payments for the buildings it managed under ASM Global, the building management firm it owned with Canadian private equity firm Onex and recently sold to Legends Hospitality.
The revised complaint does not include additional damaging exchanges between Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino and potential competitors, or new damaging information that shows the company employing heavy-handed tactics. Instead, it contains more analysis of the concert market following the merger of Live Nation-Ticketmaster. On that front, according to the complaint, “Live Nation’s conduct has harmed fans because they have been left with fewer concerts, have had more limited choices among touring artists, have paid higher ticketing fees, and have experienced a lower-quality ticketing experience than they otherwise would have but for Live Nation’s anticompetitive conduct.”
YoungBoy Never Broke Again (aka NBA YoungBoy) will plead guilty to a federal gun charge that saw him held under house arrest for more than two years while awaiting trial, according to new court filings.
In a notice lodged in court Wednesday (Aug. 14), the rapper (real name Kentrell Gaulden) told a federal judge that “I wish to plead guilty to the offense charged” — referring to a single count of possession of firearms by a convicted felon.
It’s unclear whether the guilty plea is the result of an agreement with prosecutors or will result in a more lenient sentence. YoungBoy’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment.
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The rapper was indicted by federal prosecutors in 2021 after he was allegedly found with two guns during a September 2020 incident in Baton Rouge, La. He was charged with violating a long-standing federal law that bans convicted felons from possessing guns — a rule that applied to him because he had previously been convicted in 2017 of aggravated assault with a firearm.
The rapper had finally been set for a trial on that charge this July. But in a March ruling, a federal judge paused the case to await a Supreme Court ruling on a major gun-control case that could play a key role in YoungBoy’s efforts to avoid a conviction. That ruling came out in June, but the case had yet to fully resume when Wednesday’s notice was filed.
While awaiting trial, YoungBoy has been confined to his Salt Lake City mansion — a house arrest that’s lasted more than two full years. In October, his attorneys pleaded that the “long period of social isolation” was harming his mental health and asked that the judge loosen restrictions, including allowing him to travel to a recording studio to create new music. But that request was largely denied in November.
While Wednesday’s plea will resolve the federal gun charge, YoungBoy is facing dozens of newer state charges in Utah after he was arrested in April for allegedly running a “large scale prescription fraud ring” while living under house arrest.
Those charges include identity fraud, obtaining a prescription under false pretenses, forgery, possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person, engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity and possession of a controlled substance.
YoungBoy was granted release on bond in May; it’s unclear when he might ultimately face trial on the prescription drug charges.
Adidas AG has won a court order dismissing a class-action lawsuit that claims the German sneaker giant violated securities laws by failing to warn its shareholders about Ye’s offensive behavior.
The case claimed that Adidas knew about serious problems with Ye (formerly Kanye West) as far back as 2018 but failed to disclose them, leaving investors facing losses when the company finally ended the partnership in 2022 over Ye’s antisemitic tirades and erratic behavior.
In a ruling Friday (Aug. 16), Judge Karin Immergut said she did not condone Ye’s conduct “erratic, inappropriate, and antisemitic” behavior and said it was “troubling” that it had happened at Adidas, but that it did not rise to the level of securities fraud.
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“The question before this court is not whether to admonish Ye or hold Adidas morally accountable for Ye’s conduct,” Immergut wrote. “Rather, this Court is faced with a precise legal question: has Plaintiff sufficiently pleaded facts showing that Adidas misled investors and thereby committed federal securities fraud? On the current record before this Court, the answer is no.”
Adidas ran a lucrative collaboration with Ye and his Yeezy apparel brand for nearly a decade. But the party ended in 2022, when the sneaker company (and many others) cut ties with the embattled rapper amid a wave of offensive statements he made about Jewish people. In an October 2022 statement announcing the split, Adidas said the rapper’s statements were “unacceptable, hateful and dangerous.”
It’s been a messy breakup for Adidas. The split contributed to a loss of $655 million in sales for the last three months of 2022 and left Adidas holding $1.3 billion worth of unsold Yeezys and facing tricky questions about how to dispose of them responsibly. Adidas also battled Ye in court over millions in company funds and disclosed that it was litigating other aspects of the divorce in private arbitration.
In May 2023, a group of investors took Adidas to court over the breakup, arguing that Adidas executives had been aware for years of the potential harm that could come from the Ye partnership but had failed to publicly share such concerns with shareholders, as required by U.S. securities law.
In particular, the lawsuit cited a November 2022 Wall Street Journal article reporting that Adidas executives feared for years that the Yeezy relationship could “blow up at any moment.” The article reported that West had made antisemitic comments in front of Adidas staffers, including suggesting that an album be named after Adolf Hitler. The Journal story also highlighted a 2018 presentation to then-CEO Kasper Rørsted that detailed the risks of the arrangement and contemplated cutting ties with him.
But in Friday’s ruling, Judge Immergut sided with arguments from Adidas that the company’s disclosure statements had not misled investors about the risk posed by Ye. In one passage, she reminded the plaintiffs that Ye had shown signs of erratic behavior well before the split with Adidas — quoting statements in which he said that “racism is a dated concept” and that slavery was a “choice.”
“This court would be remiss not to note the very public nature of Ye’s behavior before Fall 2022,” the judge wrote. “After all, courts are not required to exhibit a naiveté from which ordinary citizens are free.”
The judge gave the investors one final chance to refile an updated version of their case against Adidas, but she cast doubt on whether they could overcome the problems she had identified in her ruling.
Attorneys for both sides did not immediately return a request for comment.
After Donald Trump posted AI-generated images to social media that falsely suggested Taylor Swift had endorsed him, can the superstar take legal action against the Republican presidential nominee? We asked the experts.
Posted on Sunday (Aug. 18) to Trump’s account on his own Truth Social platform, several of the photos showed women in t-shirts with the slogan “Swifties for Trump” emblazoned on the front. Some of those shots appeared to have been generated by AI, including several originally posted by a satire website.
But the most prominent image showed Swift herself, dressed up as Uncle Sam in the style of a World War II-era recruiting poster, bearing a clear message: “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.” At the top of the post, Trump himself responded to the apparent endorsement: “I accept!”
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The images quickly sparked outrage among fans of the superstar singer, who has long been an outspoken critic of the 45th president. Though she has not yet endorsed a candidate in 2024, Swift supported Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris in 2020 — and she blasted Trump for “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism” and urged her legions of fans to vote him out of office.
As news of Trump’s post spread across the internet, many Swifties quickly wondered the same thing: Could Taylor take legal action against the former president?
According to Jessica Silbey, a professor at Boston University School of Law and an expert in intellectual property and constitutional law, Trump’s fake endorsement post likely violates Swift’s right of publicity — the legal power to control how your name, image and likeness are used by others.
“Everyone enjoys a right of publicity,” says Silbey, who has written extensively about the internet. “This kind of use — being made to say and seen as believing things you don’t — is at the core of the right.”
As the explosive growth of artificial intelligence tools has made it easier to convincingly mimic real people, lawmakers have scrambled to empower individuals like Swift to better protect their right of publicity. The federal NO FAKES Act, currently under debate in Congress, would make it illegal to publish a “digital replica” of someone’s likeness without their consent, including their voice or their image.
Trump’s post — featuring a photorealistic, AI-generated replica of Swift’s image without her consent — would almost certainly violate that new federal law. But even without the NO FAKES Act, states across the country already protect the right of publicity and would likely give Swift grounds to sue Trump or his campaign. Silbey says Swift might also explore suing him for defamation, claiming the false presidential endorsement harmed her reputation.
Whether the star should do so is a different question. Such litigation would be long and costly and Trump has potential defense strategies, including pinning the blame on the people who originally created the images, or arguing that his posts were free speech shielded by the First Amendment. And even if Taylor won, it’s hard to say whether it would be worth the effort to pull down one post.
“I’m skeptical the juice would be worth the squeeze,” says Woodrow Hartzog, another professor at Boston University School of Law.
Rather than responding with cease-and-desist letters or a lawsuit, Swift might decide that she’s better off fighting Trump’s fake endorsement with a legitimate endorsement of her own, broadcast across social media to her millions of die-hard fans. That’s the kind of remedy that no court can issue — and one that will likely hurt Trump far more than any judge could.
“I think Swift probably has more effective political rather than legal recourse here,” Hartzog said.
A Missouri woman has been arrested for allegedly attempting to defraud the family of Elvis Presley and steal their ownership interest in Graceland, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday (Aug. 16).
The 53-year-old woman, whose name is Lisa Jeanine Findley but has gone by numerous aliases, has been charged with mail fraud and aggravated identity theft. She faces a maximum of 20 years in prison on the former charge and a mandatory minimum of two years on the latter; she made an initial court appearance in Missouri on Friday.
“As alleged in the complaint, the defendant orchestrated a scheme to conduct a fraudulent sale of Graceland, falsely claiming that Elvis Presley’s daughter had pledged the historic landmark as collateral for a loan that she failed to repay before her death,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, in a statement. “As part of the brazen scheme, we allege that the defendant created numerous false documents and sought to extort a settlement from the Presley family. Now she is facing federal charges. The Criminal Division and its partners are committed to holding fraudsters to account.”
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According to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Tennessee on Thursday (Aug. 15), Findley allegedly posed as three different people affiliated with a company called Naussany Investments & Private Lending in claiming that Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, had used the famed Memphis mansion as collateral to secure a loan of $3.8 million that she failed to repay. She also allegedly fabricated loan documents and forged the signatures of Lisa Marie and a notary public to file a false creditor’s claim with the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles and a false deed of trust with the Shelby Country Register’s Office in Memphis. The Justice Department also claims that Findley published a fraudulent foreclosure notice in the Memphis daily newspaper The Commercial Appeal announcing that Naussany Investments would auction Graceland on May 23.
The attempted auction was quickly blocked after Presley’s granddaughter and Lisa Marie’s daughter, Riley Keough — who took over as trustee of Promenade Trust, the entity that controls Graceland, following Lisa Marie’s death in January 2023 — won a court order halting it. Shortly thereafter, Findley allegedly wrote to Presley family representatives, the Tennessee state court and the media to falsely claim that the person responsible for the faud was an identity thief based in Nigeria.
“Fame and money are magnets for criminals who look to capitalize on another person’s celebrity status,” said Eric Shen, inspector in charge of U.S. Postal Inspection Service Criminal Investigations Group (USPIS), in a statement. “In this case, Ms. Findley allegedly took advantage of the very public and tragic occurrences in the Presley family as an opportunity to prey on the name and financial status of the heirs to the Graceland estate, attempting to steal what rightfully belongs to the Presley family for her personal gain. Postal Inspectors and their law enforcement partners put an end to her alleged scheme, protecting the Presley family from continued harm and stress.”
Courtney Kramer, the Republican challenger to Fani Willis in the race for Fulton County District Attorney in Georgia, is vowing to end the long-running YSL RICO trial involving Young Thug if she’s elected, according to a statement issued by her campaign on Friday (Aug. 16).
“With no apparent justice in sight, I have become highly concerned and disappointed in the lack of prosecutorial oversight in this case,” Kramer said in the statement. “As time goes on, the public has witnessed a trial that is undoubtedly over prosecuted by attorneys who have repeatedly been admonished for lack of trial prepartion: a complete and utter waste of the court’s time.”
Kramer goes on to blast prosecutors in the case, noting that they were recently “condemned” by new judge Paige Reese Whitaker “for not following the ethical and legal duty to disclose exculpatory evidence that could prove fruitful for the defense, one of the most basic requirements in the courtroom.” She further contends that the case “was brought to bring fame” to Willis, “not to bring justice to the community,” and that it’s resulted in “endless amounts of taxpayer dollars” being spent “on a prosecution that is based almost entirely on witnesses with little to no credibility.”
“If I am elected as the next District Attorney of Fulton County, I promise to end this prosecution immediately,” said Kramer. “I challenge my opponent to do the same thing, the right thing, and end this prosection and release the accused in this case who are being held without bond.”
Representatives for Willis and Young Thug did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s requests for comment.
The YSL case was set into motion in May 2022 when Thug (real name Jeffery Williams) was indicted along with dozen of others over allegations that their YSL was not a record label called Young Stoner Life but a violent Atlanta street game called Young Slime Life. The group of defendants was charged under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, with prosecutors claiming they operated a criminal enterprise that committed murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.
Since his arrest, Thug remained in jail despite multiple calls for his release. On Aug. 8, Judge Whitaker denied requests by Thug’s attorneys to declare a mistrial over the explosive revelation of a secret “ex parte” meeting between the since-removed judge in the case, Ural Glanville, prosecutors and a key witness. Prior to that, she denied their renewed motion to release Thug on bond.
Notably, the trial, which began in January 2023 and resumed on Monday (Aug. 12), is now the longest in Georgia state history; with dozens of witnesses still set to testify, it’s estimated to run well into next year.
You can read Kramer’s full statement here.
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Rapper Quando Rondo pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal drug offense before a judge in Georgia. The 25-year-old rapper, whose given name is Tyquian Terrel Bowman, was indicted in U.S. District Court last December on charges of conspiring with others to possess and distribute drugs including methamphetamine, fentanyl, cocaine and marijuana. […]
More than nine months after Mariah Carey was again sued for allegedly stealing her perennial holiday classic “All I Want for Christmas is You” from an earlier song, her attorneys have filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing that the songs share nothing but commonplace musical building blocks.
In November, songwriter Vince Vance (real name Andy Stone) filed a second lawsuit against Carey accusing her of copyright infringement, arguing that her 1994 smash “was a greater than 50% clone…in both lyric choice and chord expressions” of his 1989 song of the same name, which was performed by his group Vince Vance and the Valiants (a similar lawsuit Vance filed in 2022 was subsequently dropped without prejudice, meaning he was allowed to refile). He was joined in the November action by Troy Plaintiff, who claims to have co-written the song with Vance.
But in documents filed in Los Angeles federal court on Monday (Aug. 12), attorneys for Carey and her co-defendants, including “All I Want” co-writer Walter Afanasieff, contend that Vance’s claims fail the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal’s “extrinsic test for substantial similarity in protectable expression” — essentially arguing that any similarities between the two songs are coincidental.
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“Plaintiffs’ claimed similarities between Vance and Carey are unprotectable…because they are, among other things, fragmentary and commonplace building blocks of expression that Vance and Carey use differently in their overall different lyrics and music,” the filing reads.
In the November lawsuit, Vance and Powers argued that the two songs share a “unique linguistic structure” and musical elements that Carey allegedly copied for her mega-hit, which has reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during the holiday season for five years running. They also claimed that despite how common it is today, the phrase “all I want for Christmas is you” was a “distinctive” one back when Vance and Powers’ song was released.
But Carey and her co-defendants argue that the plaintiffs “lack competent evidence that the songs share any protectable expression.” They add that reports produced by two musicologists Vance and Powers retained to bolster their case “list isolated, fragmentary similarities in Vance and Carey, while omitting differences and the context in which the claimed similarities occur,” making their conclusions “inherently subjective” and “irrelevant to the objective extrinsic test.”
“The claimed similarities are an unprotectable jumble of elements: a title and hook phrase used by many earlier Christmas songs, other commonplace words, phrases, and Christmas tropes like ‘Santa Claus’ and ‘mistletoe,’ and a few unprotectable pitches and chords randomly scattered throughout these completely different songs,” the lawyers write.
A representative for Vance and Powers did not immediately respond to Billboard’s request for comment.