A new blow leads to rejection of a lawsuit in The FuckJerry

The lawsuit filed against FuckJerry, alleging that the Instagram account stole a meme to promote tequila JAJA, was dismissed. Mainly, because the guy that they would have stolen the meme from stole it from someone else.

The initial complaint was filed on Tuesday and the plaintiff, Olorunfemi Coker, alleged that the @badjerry Instagram account, the founder, Elliot Tebele, and the social media agency Jerry Media, had not only stolen his original joke, but also sown the confusion with that.

Just two days later, Coker's legal team decided to voluntarily file the case. This is because the meme in question was not originally Coker, to begin with. Coker at the beginning tweeted his version of the January 23 joke. However, you can find almost identical versions of the meme on Twitter and on Tumblr on January 21st, from accounts that apparently do not belong to Coker.

This reminds us that memes, by their very nature, are collaborative experiences that build on each other and that there is nothing wrong with that. Plus, nothing wrong with sharing things you find on the internet. But FuckJerry just stole jokes without giving credit and earn money sinks. (The company recently announced that it would now get permission from the creators.) Apparently, Coker decided to give them a taste of their own medicine, but it spoiled it because the Internet never forget. Coker did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Naturally, the members of FuckJerry are delighted. "We are pleased to see this lawsuit filed – just two days after it was filed," FuckJerry lawyer Jason P.W. Halperin of Mintz said in a statement sent to Gizmodo. "Our own investigation revealed that Mr. Coker was almost certainly not the original creator of the content in question described in the complaint and therefore had no standing to engage in such action. Our clients are now considering taking their own legal action, including defamation, against the responsible parties. "

Ok, so maybe the Coker affair has no status. Maybe the mem was not really his, to begin with. But the fact remains that the agency still took advantage of a meme that was in no way an original FuckJerry. In fact, none of the memes that FuckJerry monetizes are original. And despite a letter written by Tebele on Feb. 2 that the account would be tied to a "consent-based" content policy, that does not mean they're going to necessarily share all that money with the very creators they benefit from. Shouting about it as if it were a huge victory is as empty as the innumerable portfolios of content creators FuckJerry were ripped off.