Conan O'Brien Going to Court Over Joke-Stealing Allegations

Final pretrial conference scheduled for August.

By Alex Gilyadov

Conan O'Brien is going to court over joke-stealing claims.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, O'Brien and his parent company Time Warner are going to trial over accusations that O'Brien and the writers of his late-night show stole jokes from freelance comedy writer Robert "Alex" Kaseberg's social media feeds and blog.

Conan O'Brien on the TBS late-night talk show Conan

The jokes, which poked fun at Tom Brady, the Washington Monument and Caitlyn Jenner, were used during the monologue for Conan, and were allegedly pulled from those written by Kaseberg between December 2014 and June 2015.

A judge recently ruled that three out of five of these copyright claims by Kaseberg and his lawyers could go forward. "Accusing a comedian of stealing a joke is the worst thing you can accuse them of, in my opinion, short of murder," O'Brien said in a deposition.

Judge Janis Sammartino said in her statement that, "although the punchlines of the jokes are creative, they are nonetheless constrained by the limited number of variations that would (1) be humorous (2) as applied to the specific facts articulated in each joke’s previous sentence and (3) provide mass appeal. This merits only thin protection. The standard for infringement must therefore also be some form of 'virtual identity.'"

If there isn't an out-of-court settlement, a final pretrial conference is scheduled to take place in August, with Patton Oswald on Conan's team as one of their expert witnesses.

Alex Gilyadov is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter. 

Let's block ads! (Why?)