Jerry Seinfeld wins ‘Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee’ copyright dispute
Series has aired since 2012
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Jerry Seinfeld has won a copyright infringement dispute over the show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
Plaintiff Christian Charles sued Seinfeld and others in February 2018, claiming authorship of the TV series.
The show came out in 2012 on Crackle and is now streaming on Netflix. Its 11th season aired in 2019.
An appeals court moved on Thursday to vindicate Seinfeld in the case.
The US court of appeals for the second circuit affirmed a previous decision to dismiss Charles’s copryight claim.
According to the appeals court, Charles’s claim is “time-barred”, meaning it was “brought too late” to be accepted by the court.
“The district court identified two events described in the Second Amended Complaint that would have put a reasonably diligent plaintiff on notice that his ownership claims were disputed,” court documents state.
“First, in February 2012, Seinfeld rejected Charles’s request for backend compensation and made it clear that Charles’s involvement would be limited to a work-for-hire basis.
“...Second, the show premiered in July 2012 without crediting Charles, at which point his ownership claim was publicly repudiated. ...Either one of these developments was enough to place Charles on notice that his ownership claim was disputed and therefore this action, filed six years later, was brought too late.”
Seinfeld recently suggested that Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee might have come to an end.
“We haven’t planned anything with that show, I kind of feel like if I did that tour,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
“I know they look very casual and easy, but they’re actually kind of a lot of work to make, the editing is very intense. I don’t know, I feel like I may have done that exploration at this point.”