A lawsuit has been filed against Conan O'Brien over allegedly stealing some jokes from a freelance writer on Twitter. On July 22, San Diego resident Robert Kaseberg filed the lawsuit against O'Brien, as well as TBS and a few others on his comedian team, because they violated copyrights on four different jokes, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Kaseberg had posted the jokes in question to his personal blog, as well as his Twitter account, and they somehow ended up in O'Brien's late night show monologue.
The first joke, which was published on January 14, read, "A Delta flight this week took off from Cleveland to New York with just two passengers. And they fought over control of the armrest the entire flight." Later that night, O'Brien pretty much made the exact same joke saying, "On Monday, a Delta flight from Cleveland to New York took off with just 2 passengers. Yet somehow, they spent the whole flight fighting over the armrest."
Now, this could have just been a coincidence, but it didn't stop here. Over the next few months, Conan may have taken as many as three other jokes from Kaseberg, on topics ranging from Tom Brady, Caitlyn Jenner and the Washington Monument.
"We at Conaco firmly believe there is no merit to this lawsuit," the production company behind O'Briends show said, according to Billboard. Twitter has recently taken steps to make sure tweets are not stolen, according to The Huffington Post. Kaseberg is demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars in actual and statuary damages. O'Brien has not yet responded to the controversy.
