Sanity Prevails As Charles Carreon Withdraws Suit Against The Oatmeal


Remember the guy who sued The Oatmeal on behalf of FunnyJunk? He’s today withdrawn a series of ridiculous lawsuits that would have seen money raised by readers donated to two prominent charities.

When The Oatmeal writer Matthew Inman found that his comics had been hosted without permission on a website called Funnyjunk he demanded that they were taken down before saying a few choice words about Funnyjunk on his blog. This earned him a legal threat of his own just over a year later.

Funnyjunk and its lawyer, Charles Carreon, demanded not only a retraction of the comments about Funnyjunk but he also wanted the cartoonist hand over $US20,000 in damages.

Inman flew right off:

You want ME to pay YOU $20,000 for hosting MY unlicensed comics on YOUR shitty website for the past three years? No. I’ve got a better idea.
1. I’m going to try and raise $20,000 in donations.
2. I’m going to take a photo of the raised money.
3. I’m going to mail you that photo, along with this drawing of your mom [sic] seducing a Kodiak bear
4. I’m going to take the money and donate one half to the National Wildlife Federation and the other half to the American Cancer Society.

64 minutes after putting up the philanthropic “f**k you” that was the Bearlove Good, Cancer Bad campaign, Inman hit his $US20,000 funding goal.

Holy shit $20,000 in 64 minutes! YOU PEOPLE ARE AMAZING.

Carreon then decided it was a capital idea to sue Indiegogo, the American Cancer Society and the National Wildlife Federation and Inman over the campaign.

Despite the weird legal malarkey, the Indiegogo fundraising campaign closed minutes ago, raising over 10 times what it had initially set out to: $US220,014.

The case could have gone anywhere from here, but strangely enough it’s now gone nowhere in a manner of speaking.

Charles Carreon has today withdrawn the suits he had against The Oatmeal and its founder Matthew Inman today, according to a statement from the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, who were defending Inman.

The EFF has labelled the suit as nothing more than a stunt by Carreon:

Inman sparked a flood of charity donations, and yet Carreon still tried to punish him for making fun of his baseless legal threats by dragging him through the court system,” said EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. “We’re very pleased that Carreon has seen that his lawsuit had no merit, and hope that this is the end of his abuse of the legal system.

Hurray for common sense. [EFF]


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