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. “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 thei.