Conan O'Brien: Why I settled "My Stupid Lawsuit" over joke-stealing

Variety

In a Variety essay, Conan pointed to the problem of "tweet-saming," where numerous people come up with the same obvious joke at roughly the same time. Except, Conan was hit with a federal lawsuit after a San Diego man accused his writers of stealing his jokes. Conan wrote that he ultimately decided to resolve the long-running dispute with a settlement to avoid a costly jury trial. "This saga ended with the gentleman in San Diego and I deciding to resolve our dispute amicably," he writes. "I stand by every word I have written here, but I decided to forgo a potentially farcical and expensive jury trial in federal court over five jokes that don’t even make sense anymore. Four years and countless legal bills have been plenty. What’s important to me, today, is defending the integrity and honesty of my writers. They are remarkably hard working and decent people, and this episode has been upsetting for them, and for myself."