More than nine months after Mariah Carey sued again for allegedly stealing her perennial holiday classic “All I Want for Christmas is You” from an earlier song, her lawyers have filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the songs share nothing more than commonplace. musical building blocks.
In November, songwriter Vince Vance (real name Andy Stone) filed a second lawsuit against Carey accusing her of copyright infringement, claiming that her 1994 smash “was a more than 50% clone … in both lyrics and phrasing chord” of his 1989 song of the same name, performed by Vince Vance and the Valiants (a similar lawsuit filed by Vance in 2022 was subsequently dismissed without prejudice, meaning he was allowed to file again). Joining him in the November action was Troy Plaintiff, who claims he co-wrote the song with Vance.
But in documents filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Monday (August 12), lawyers for Carey and her co-defendants, including “All I Want” co-writer Walter Afanasieff, argue that Vance's claims dismiss the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal. extrinsic test for substantial similarity in protectable expression” — essentially arguing that any similarities between the two songs are coincidental.
“Plaintiffs' alleged similarities between Vance and Carey are unprotectable … because they are, among other things, fragmentary and common building blocks of expression that Vance and Carey use differently in their different lyrics and music,” the filing states.
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 smash hit, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in during the festive season for five years running. They also claimed that, despite how common it is today, the line “all I want for Christmas is you” was “discreet” when Vance and Powers' song was released.
But Carey and her co-defendants argue that the plaintiffs “lack sufficient evidence that the songs share any protected expression.” They add that the reports produced by two musicologists Vance and Powers retained to support their case “record isolated, patchy similarities in Vance and Carey, while omitting differences and the context in which the claimed similarities occur,” making their conclusions ” inherently subjective' and unrelated to objective external testing'.
“The claimed similarities are an unprotected jumble of elements: a title and hook phrase used by many previous Christmas songs, other common words, phrases and Christmas tropes such as 'Santa Claus' and 'mistletoe,' and a few unprotected voices and chords randomly scattered throughout these completely different songs,” the lawyers write.
A representative for Vance and Powers did not immediately respond Bulletin boardhis request for comment.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/pro/mariah-carey-all-i-want-for-christmas-lawsuit-dismissed/
