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Mariah Carey’s Queen Of Christmas trademark bid blocked
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 16 November 2022
Mariah Carey is not the Queen Of Christmas. It’s important you all know that. Well, maybe she is the Queen Of Christmas. But she’s not the Queen Of Christmas (TM), that’s what matters.
Because the US Patent And Trademark Office has rejected an application by one of Carey’s companies to trademark the moniker Queen Of Christmas for use on music, fragrance and alcohol products, among other things.
Carey’s claim to the title Queen Of Christmas mainly comes from the ongoing success of her hit ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’, of course.
In past interviews the musician has insisted that it’s others who have dubbed her Christmas’s Queen, but that didn’t stop her company from seeking to secure the exclusive rights to the ‘Queen Of Christmas’ brand through the trademark application.
That application was opposed by another music-maker, Elizabeth Chan, who calls herself a ‘Christmas recording artist’, runs a company that specialises in Christmas music, and released an album called ‘Queen Of Christmas’.
In her objection to Carey’s trademark bid earlier this year, she argued that no one person should have exclusive rights to that name. “Christmas is big enough for more than one ‘Queen’”, she stated, adding that, even within music, ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)’ singer Darlene Love and ‘Rockin Around The Christmas Tree’ singer Brenda Lee could both surely also be considered queens of Christmas?
Carey seemingly didn’t respond to Chan’s objection, meaning the latter musician won by default and the former’s trademark application was denied. This means Carey can’t stop anyone else from using the ‘Queen Of Christmas’ brand.
Welcoming the decision, Chan said in a statement: “Christmas is a season of giving, not the season of taking, and it is wrong for an individual to attempt to own and monopolise a nickname like Queen Of Christmas for the purposes of abject materialism”.
“As an independent artist and small business owner, my life’s work is to bring people together for the holiday season, which is how I came to be called the Queen Of Christmas”, she added. “I wear that title as a badge of honour and with full knowledge that it will be – and should be – bestowed on others in the future”.
“My goal in taking on this fight”, she then concluded, “was to stand up to trademark bullying not just to protect myself, but also to protect future Queens Of Christmas”.
And if that’s not a perfect example of the festive spirit, I don’t know what is.
Another musician who backed Chan in opposing Carey’s trademark application earlier this year was the aforementioned Darlene Love who performed ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)’ on Phil Spector’s 1963 Christmas album.
Welcoming the news that the application had been blocked, she posted on Facebook: “Thank you, Lord! Congrats to all the other Queen Of Christmases around the world, living and whom have passed!”
Neither Carey nor her legal team have as yet commented on the unsuccessful trademark bid. But then, it’s mid-November already and the Queen Of Christmas is presumably very busy.
