Some cases of alleged joke theft are ambiguous, due to the possibility of simultaneous and coincidental discovery.
[1] At the time there were few chances that a performer from one area would meet one from another and a single twenty-minute set could sustain a comic for a decade.
Bill Cosby admitted to stealing a joke by George Carlin involving an uneducated football player doing a television commercial.
[6] At least three stand-up comedians have gone on the record stating they believe Leary stole not just some of Hicks' material but his persona and attitude.
[2] In his memoir Gasping for Airtime, Jay Mohr admitted that he lifted an entire routine from Rick Shapiro's act for a 1995 Saturday Night Live sketch.
[14] In France, many famous stand-up comedians (Gad Elmaleh, Jamel Debbouze, Tomer Sisley, Malik Bentalha, Mickael Quiroga, Yacine Belhousse, Arthur, Michel Leeb, Walter [fr], Rémi Gaillard, Roland Magdane, Michael Youn, Mathieu Madénian, Olivier de Benoist) have been accused of plagiarism by the Facebook/Twitter/YouTube account CopyComic [fr].
[15][16] In 2011, Australia's Got Talent contestant Jordan Paris presented an act of stand-up comedy and quickly proceeded to the semi-finals.
It was later found out that the joke that went well – "I just sacked my two writers – Copy and Paste" – had been done in 2009 by comedian Jeffrey Ross, about Brad Garrett, at a roast of Joan Rivers.
He's been living my entire life as though it was his, changing some names and then promoting with twitters... Look at his site and most the entirety of it is me, including the comments where he uses my stuff to pass as his own conversation.
"[19] As part of his website Stewart Lee hosts Plagiarists Corner where he cites examples from Jack Whitehall, Ricky Gervais, Hari Kondabolu, Simon Amstell, John Oliver using material similar to his own.
[25] In the 2010s, the widespread use of video camera-equipped smartphones led to an increase in unauthorized recordings of live comedy shows, some of which were shared online, which may have facilitated joke theft.
Some comedians request that no unauthorized audio or video recordings be made of their shows to reduce joke theft.
[26] In January 2016, Amy Schumer was accused of stealing jokes by comedians Tammy Pescatelli, Kathleen Madigan, and Wendy Liebman.
After a few days of performing the bit, he discovered a column by Earl Wilson which attributed the joke to Rip Taylor.
[34] Cavett and Woody Allen often cited to each other the many instances of their jokes appearing in television shows without their permission, sometimes even falsely attributed to each other.
The column quoted Jerry Zucker’s defense how there are only “a finite number of jokes” making overlap inevitable, but the same article cited copycat gags also lifted from The Pink Panther films and other sources.
In the interview, The Grill Team's co-host Matty Johns told an amusing anecdote about introducing a child to the board game Test Match.
Bert Williams, a star of the Ziegfeld Follies, pilfered a story about fish and added enough laughs to turn it into a classic fifteen-minute routine.