The Tonight Show host Jay Leno and NBC Studios have sued humor editor Judy Brown and her publishers in U.S. District Court, claiming that her collection of joke books has profited from material filched from his stand-up routines. Leno and other comedians including Rita Rudner, are seeking unspecified damages and a permanent injunction against Brown’s 19 books “mainly compilations of jokes by comedians including Ellen DeGeneres, Joan Rivers and Jerry Seinfeld,” according to the lawsuit.
Brown’s books credit the comedians who wrote the jokes, which only serves to make the copyright violations more egregious: The books sell precisely because they include jokes by famous comedians, the lawsuit claims.
Brown has even sent representatives to comedy clubs to record comedians’ routines, so she can then copy the jokes into her books and profit from the original comedic works of others, according to the lawsuit.
The former L.A. Weekly comedy critic’s books include The Comedy Thesaurus, The Funny Pages and Joke Stew.
The lawsuit says the plaintiffs contacted Brown and Andrews McMeel Publishing during the summer to request that they stop publication of any past and future infringing works.
“We think there’s a very important principle at stake: protecting intellectual property of the comedians,” Boutrous said. These jokes are products of a very careful choice of words.
The other plaintiffs are comics Jimmy Brogan and Diane Nichols and Sue Pascoe, wife of the late comedian Ronnie Shakes.
Source: MSNBC
Update January 2008: Jay Leno and comics settle lawsuit for ‘undisclosed’ amount
