Mariah Carey’s legal team has requested the dismissal of a copyright infringement lawsuit against her.
The five-time Grammy winner wants a copyright infringement lawsuit thrown out of court, arguing her song All I Want For Christmas Is You is an original work.
Last November, songwriter Vince Vance – real name Andy Stone – filed a lawsuit claiming Mariah’s 1994 hit had copied his 1989 song of the same name, arguing it, “was a greater than 50% clone… in both lyric choice and chord expressions” and use a “unique linguistic structure”.
This week, however, 55-year-old Mariah’s legal team has hit back with a request to have the claim dismissed, declaring the two tracks merely use standard song structures.
“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 stated.
The request also argued the lawsuit’s claimants, “lack competent evidence that the songs share any protectable expression” and described the elements claimed to have been stolen were, “unprotectable”.
“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 suit read.
