Comedians don’t see the funny side as they claim copyright infringement for stealing their gags

Keith Chegwin has been accused of stealing another comedian’s gags – a charge he strenuously denies. But are jokes copyrightable? In theory, yes. But copyright only protects the expression of an idea. If there is a joke that is repeated word for word, then it would be likely to infringe copyright – assuming the original comedian had copyright in it and had not copied it from someone else. If a similar theme is copied but different words are used, it would depend on how unique the particular theme is and how close the second version of the joke is to the first.

But some comedians find this no laughing matter when their livelihoods depend on the uniqueness of their scripts. This is not the first time comedians have threatened legal action against others for copyright infringement.

And one of the biggest comedians to suffer was the winner of the funniest joke award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2009, Dan Antopolski. His joke was so funny that it ended up posted all over the Internet. He was not given attribution for the gag. If he would have tried to use it again, people might have thought he was ripping someone else off or copying someone else’s material! In any event, it would not have been funny because it had become so notorious that it would not have been funny the second time. Then the only joke would have been on him!