Mariah Carey reckons that a songwriter who filed a song-theft lawsuit against her in relation to ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ has presented “muddled, frivolous and bad faith” arguments in a bid to stop that legal action from being dismissed.
Lawyers working for Carey, her co-writer on the Christmas hit and label Sony Music claim that they have “methodically” demonstrated that the musical elements shared by ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ and an earlier song of the same name are “unprotectable, individually and in combination” under copyright law.
In response, they argue, the writer of the earlier song, Vince Vance, has basically tried to distract the court with “conclusory and often irrelevant arguments”.
Vance co-wrote a song called ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ that was originally released in 1989, five years before Carey’s Christmas hit.
In a lawsuit filed last November, Vance said that Carey’s song copied key elements of his, including the “compositional structure of an extended comparison between a loved one and trappings of seasonal luxury” and “several of plaintiffs’ lyrical phrases”.
The Carey side argues that Vance’s case for song-theft does not pass the so called ‘extrinsic test’, which is employed by courts in California in copyright legal battles like this one.
Her lawyers defined that test in a court filing earlier this week. Vance, they said, must identify “concrete, objective similarities” between the two works.
The court can then disregard any similarities where the similar elements are not protected by copyright. Then, "if no similarities remain, or only insubstantial similarities remain", the case can be dismissed on summary judgement without going to trial.
Carey reckons that the similarities identified by Vance are “an unprotectable jumble of elements”. For example, “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”. Therefore Vance fails the extrinsic test.
He filed his own motion last month arguing otherwise. However, says Team Carey, that motion in part dealt with matters that have nothing to do with the extrinsic test, even though that's all that matters at this stage. And when it did get onto the extrinsic test, “it misses the point completely”. They claim that Vance’s motion simply said his team had “identified ‘enough’ similarities to satisfy the extrinsic test”, and therefore the lawsuit should be allowed to proceed.
“That is not how it works”, they go on. The court needs to “determine whether the claimed similarities are protectable” and Vance’s team “have not even attempted to provide the court a basis to make that determination”. Indeed, they add, “it is undisputed that the claimed similarities are unprotectable”.
Needless to say, Vance does not agree. He made another court filing this week insisting that previously submitted expert testimony meets the requirement to avoid dismissal.
His lawyers argue, “So long as the plaintiff can demonstrate, through expert testimony ... that the similarity was ‘substantial’ and to ‘protected elements’ of the copyrighted work, the extrinsic test is satisfied. Plaintiff has met that standard here”.
Vance originally sued Carey et al through the courts in Louisiana, but dismissed that case and re-filed in California last November.