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Mariah Carey Asks Judge to Drop ‘All I Want for Christmas’ Copyright Lawsuit
Mariah Carey wants a copyright lawsuit over "All I Want for Christmas is You" dismissed, arguing the two songs share only commonplace building blocks.
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. 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 mega-hit, which has reached No. But Carey and her co-defendants argue that the plaintiffs “lack competent evidence that the songs share any protectable expression.” They add that reports produced by two musicologists Vance and Powers retained to bolster their case “list isolated, fragmentary similarities in Vance and Carey, while omitting differences and the context in which the claimed similarities occur,” making their conclusions “inherently subjective” and “irrelevant to the objective extrinsic test.”
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