Conan O'Brien Stealing Jokes Posted on Twitter, Claims Suit

Conan O'Brien is being sued by a California man who charged the talk show host stole his jokes after he posted them on Twitter.

Robert Kaseberg filed the lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court of Southern California, naming O'Brien individually as well as Conaco LLC, TBS and Time Warner.

Kaseberg claimed in the lawsuit that jokes he posted online ended up in O'Brien's monologues on his late night talk show "Conan" shortly after appearing on the social media site, reported the New York Daily News.

In the lawsuit, Kaseberg said O'Brien first stole a joke that was posted on a personal blog and Twitter on Jan. 14: "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."

The lawsuit said on the same day O'Brien made a similar joke: "On Monday, a Delta flight from Cleveland to New York took off with just two passengers. Yet somehow, they spent the whole flight fighting over the armrest."

Kaseberg charged that jokes he posted about Caitlyn Jenner, Tom Brady and the Washington Monument also turned up on O'Brien's late night monologue, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Kaseberg is demanding actual and statutory damages.

Kaseberg's lawsuit may have caused a reaction with the social media website and comedy writers, wrote THR's Eriq Gardner.

"This past week, a few jokes published on the media service were removed, apparently at the request of a freelance writer," wrote Gardner. "This led to numerous articles that Twitter was taking joke theft seriously, though it's probably nothing more than an individual submitting a simple form pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."

Sean O'Neal, of the A.V. Club, wrote about Twitter's action against alleged joke thieves in a post Monday.

"… Twitter is allowing users to file DMCA complaints against suspected joke thieves, then hiding their copycat tweets at the request of the 'copyright holder,'" O'Neal wrote. "For those who want to become famous Twitter comedians, it seems they will have to revert to the traditional method of paying a room full of desperate gag writers $5 a tweet."

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