James Corden and Ricky Gervais: Can you steal a joke?

James Corden has admitted “inadvertently” using material by fellow comedian Ricky Gervais as part of a routine on The Late Late Show.

During a monologue about Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover he made a joke strikingly similar to one Gervais made in 2018 on his show Humanity.

It was delivered, he said, “obviously not knowing it came from him”.

Gervais later deleted a response in which he said one of Corden’s writers probably “came up with it” for him.

While there has been the usual reaction of comments and memes on social media, one question you might be wondering is can you – legally – take someone else’s joke?

Laura Trapnell from Paris Smith solicitors has told BBC Newsbeat that a joke could be protected either as a literary work, if the comedian wrote it down, or a dramatic work if it was performed.

The jokes also have to be substantially alike – so what was said?

“When you see Elon Musk talk about Twitter he does this thing where he goes, ‘Well, it’s the town square’,” ran Corden’s joke.

“But it isn’t. Because if someone puts up a poster in a town square that says ‘Guitar lessons available’ you don’t get people in the town go, ‘I don’t want to play the guitar’. Well that sign wasn’t for you it was for somebody else, you don’t have to get mad about all of it.”

Now let’s compare it with the Ricky Gervais version.

“That’s like going into a town square, seeing a big noticeboard and there’s a notice – ‘guitar lessons’ – and you go ‘but I don’t want guitar lessons’ – fine, it’s not for you then, just walk away, don’t worry about it.”

But after being called out online, Corden said he told the joke “obviously not knowing it came from [Gervais]”.

This could be an important distinction, according to Laura.

“The infringer is the person who affects the copying, so that may not be James Corden if, as Ricky Gervais suggests, his team wrote the joke and he merely delivered it,” she says.

“If he had no idea that the joke was copied, then James Corden would be what’s called an innocent infringer.

“This means that he’s still liable for performing a copied dramatic work. It all starts to get a bit complicated.

“The writers would be the ones in the firing line,” Laura says.

Faizan Shah, 28, is a comedian who performs stand-up sets around Manchester, and he believes that the joke came from the Late Late Show’s writers.

But he says writers often have “added pressure” to produce jokes quickly, which may sometimes lead to duplication.

“Sometimes you can’t exactly think of something original, which is going to be unbelievably funny right off the bat,” he says.

“So writers end up drawing off the back of something else that you already know is funny and your work.”

In terms of whether joke stealing is ever OK, Fazian has a strong opinion: that you should never pass off another comic’s work as your own.

“It’s just a massive no, no – because you’re basically just trying to steal an idea,” he says.

“Ricky Gervais has written it, and probably performed it multiple times to work out how he wants to perform it, to then just ‘I’ll just have that’ you’re basically not showing respect to the art form,” he adds.

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