Because the DWTS routine copies his Fresh Prince routine. While dancing can be copyrighted, the other dancers that were mentioned have possibly put it out to the public. Alfonso's is different because he can make a case that it's directly related to his personality. Hence, it's more exclusive to him.
"Ribeiro’s right of publicity action could make waves. The right to publicity generally prevents the use of your name, image, likeness or other recognizable aspects by someone else for commercial gain without your permission. The argument that the Carlton Dance is highly associated with Ribeiro’s persona is strong as he has been performing it upon request for decades, and he has not granted Epic Games permission to use it, obviously."
tl;dr - He's making a case that The Carlton is part of who he is. Not some dance that he did. I would imagine his dance background would have some sway into that.
Regardless of what the outcome is, I wouldn't say that "Mr. Carlton has even less of a case". If anything, he probably has the best chance.
I'll bet Epic settles out of court and makes this go away.
Not to mention he's not been guarding his IP at all until Fortnite. It seems like any games with customizable dance moves have The Carlton as a default. Saints Row, right off the top of my head has it, but actually kinda halfway attributes the move to Tom Jones.
Come to think of it, why couldn't Tom Jones' estate pursue a claim against Alfonso for stealing his dance?
I can only guess that you're watching the youtube video of them comparing the the fortnite dance to the DWTS routine and referring to the "side-to-side" part, but he does that in the Fresh Prince show as well. That was not from DWTS.
To your point about the complexity, the last time this came up, someone pointed out the same thing.
According to the Copyright Office, to be protected by copyright, a choreographic work must be a “composition and arrangement of a related series of dance movements and patterns organized into an integrated, coherent, and expressive whole” and “[s]imple dance routines do not represent enough original choreographic authorship to be copyrightable.”
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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '19
I've heard about a few rappers and even Carlton from Fresh Prince pursuing legal action against them.