Dude Who Filed Ridiculous Lawsuit Over Title Of Mariah Carey’s Most Famous Song Drops Case After Pretending They Sound The Same
from the all-i-want-for-christmas-is-rule-11-sanctions dept
Back in June we wrote about an absolutely ridiculous lawsuit filed by a guy named Andy Stone, but who performs as Vince Vance and the Valiants, against Mariah Carey, claiming copyright infringement from her song “All I Want for Christmas is You.” As we noted at the time, the only similarity between the two songs is the title and the theme, and neither of those are covered by copyright. Indeed, there are other songs that predated Stone’s song that also have the same title. The Carey song and the Vance song (released five years earlier) sound nothing alike.
The original complaint didn’t even try to claim that they sounded alike. It just complained that Carey didn’t seek permission from Stone. But she doesn’t need to, because she didn’t copy anything.
Incredibly, Stone filed an amended complaint that made things even worse. As we noted, the original didn’t even claim the music was similar. The amended complaint argues that they are musically similar. But not in ways that are copyrightable:
Analyzing the melody of each song, the overall contour of the same is substantially similar. In both songs, the notes of the singer’s melody ascend and descend in identically. While Defendants is more disjunct and includes more melisma, that is characteristic of Carey’s R&B style, which is vocally different from Vance’s country style. However, these differences are more of a matter of performance than composition.
This is… garbage. The songs are totally different. And then they make it worse, claiming lyrically they are similar as well. Again, they are not:
Further, the overall period of the melodic phrasing is comparable. Specifically, both songs use an antecedent-consequent phrase structure, where the initial phrase (a) ascends melodically, and the response phrase (b) then descends. (e.g., the beginning of each verse: (a) “If I wrote a letter to Santa Claus,” (b) “I would ask for just one thing” is comparable to (a) “I don’t want a lot for Christmas,” (b) There is just one thing I need.”)
There are a few other attempts at this. They’re all so ridiculous that I would have been surprised if Carey’s lawyers didn’t seek to have Stone pay their legal fees and/or seek sanctions against the lawyers who filed such a garbage lawsuit.
Of course, for now we won’t know, because, without Carey’s lawyers filing anything in response, Stone has now dropped the suit, though without prejudice, so in theory he could refile it again (or somewhere else). I have no idea why he dropped the lawsuit, but (again) if Carey’s lawyers pointed out that he was likely to lose badly and have to pay the other side, and that the lawyers could get sanctioned, they might have realized that dropping the suit before Carey filed a reply and could seek all of those things… might be the more prudent course of action.
Filed Under: all i want for christmas is you, andy stone, copyright, louisiana, sanctions, song titles, vince vance
Companies: sony music
Comments on “Dude Who Filed Ridiculous Lawsuit Over Title Of Mariah Carey’s Most Famous Song Drops Case After Pretending They Sound The Same”
I miss when lawyers wouldn’t do stupid things no matter what the client wanted.
Re: grammar?
Did this guy even have a lawyer? Besides having no valid basis, the grammar stinks.
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They signed it and have bar numbers…
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Unfortunately…
If the case was dropped but not with prejudice Carey’s lawyers should file for declaratory judgement so there’s no chance that he’ll just wait until the heat dies down and try again. He’s already shown that he’s willing to file absurd lawsuits, letting that sword hang above their heads rather than putting in a little work to get it removed just makes sense.
Well, shit. Now how can we stop Mariah from helping Christmas gain ground into October? I mean, she’s already taken over November…
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcKKTR0Sg7k
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We already have Thanksmas. Now we’ll end up with HallowThanksmas.
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THOSE BASTARDS!!!
They have declared war on Gay Christmas!!!
or something…
Sweet lawyer-generated music theory. What a fucking amazing world we live in!
More similarities
There is more in common between these songs than you realize.
For one thing, both songs use sentences in the form of:
[subject] [verb] [direct object or prepositional phrase]
Also, they both employ the English language, and combine elements of a Latin-script alphabet to form words.
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And they both have rhythm.
Slam Dunk
Whoa, your song has the up-go notes and the down-went ones? COPYRIGHT VIOLATION! And it has words, phrases, and sentences? You’d better settle now, you dirty thief.
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Publicity
Just another cheap nasty way to get ”career” publicity ?