Conan O'Brien Denies Stealing Winnetka Native's Jokes

Late night comedian Conan O’Brien officially denied stealing jokes from a California man who was raised in Winnetka in a response to a lawsuit filed in July this week.

O’Brien, host of “Conan” on TBS and longtime star of NBC’s “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” said his jokes are “independently created” and the jokes by plaintiff Alex Kaseberg are “not sufficiently original to entitle (them) to copyright protection,” the Chicago Tribune reports.

In July, Kaseberg filed a suit against O’Brien, TBS, Time Warner, “Conan” executive producer Jeff Ross and head writer Mike Sweeney seeking $600,000 plus attorney fees and accusing the defendants of lifting a number of his jokes he posted to his blog and Twitter account.

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“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” was one joke Kaseberg made on his Twitter account on January 14.

The same day, the following was attributed to O’Brien via his website. “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, O’Brien is asking for the lawsuit to be dismissed and for Kaseberg, a longtime contributor to comedy TV, to pay for the costs of the suit and attorney fees.

more via the Chicago Tribune