Leno settles lawsuit with comedy book editor

The next time you tell a joke you heard on TV to a friend, think of this woman.

OK, I'm kidding, because these jokes were published and probably went beyond fair use, but it puts in perspective how we can't just put anything into a book. Writer and editor Judy Brown and her publishers have agreed to pay thousands of dollars in damages to several people, including Jay Leno and NBC, Rita Rudner, and Jimmy Brogan, for reprinting jokes of theirs in several books about comedy. Brown reprinted several jokes over the years in 19 different books, including The Funny Pages.

Wow, 19 books?? I actually browsed through The Funny Pages and another one of Brown's books a couple of years ago at the bookstore, and they're pretty good books if you like to have a list of one-liners all in one volume and a list of who said what. It's an interesting case because Brown didn't claim to write any of the jokes, she just listed the joke as a quote and then after the joke attributed it to the comic. So I wonder when fair use ends and copyright infringement begins, exactly. The moral to the story is always good to ask permission first.