Remember how last week we found out that FunnyJunk tried to shake down The Oatmeal ‘s creator Matthew Inman for twenty-thousand clams – and that fans of the hilarious webcomic have donated $160,000 so far over Inman’s goal of $20,000, the amount requested by the lawyer, for cancer and animal charities?
To recap, after FunnyJunk demanded the amount through lawyer Charles Carreon, Inman pledged to raise the $20,000 requested- but instead of turning it over, he stated is intention to take a picture of the money and send that along with a comic of the lawyer’s mom “seducing a Kodiak bear” before donating the cash to charity for the “BearLove Good, Cancer Bad” campaign.
Within 48 hours, Carreon was huffing to media sites about how internet users had been harassing him and had forced him to remove his personal information from the internet to avoid further contact from people who found his position to be indefensible.
Neither Carreon nor FunnyJunk seem to have made any new friends over their decision to sue The Oatmeal, but Carreon hasn’t decided to back down in the wake of the controversy. No, instead of dropping the tenuous claims, Carreon himself is now suing Inman personally, and that’s not all.
Carreon is also (really) suing the charities that Inman selected to benefit from his campaign, the World Wildlife Fund and the American Cancer Society. Legal blog Popehat explains first that Inman and IndieGogo, the fundraising site, had fallen into Carreon’s legal tentacles:
“[Carreon] transcended typical internet infamy when he filed a federal lawsuit last Friday in the United Sates District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland. He belonged to the ages the moment he filed that lawsuit not only against Matthew Inman, proprietor of The Oatmeal, but also against IndieGoGo Inc. , the company that hosted Inman’s ridiculously effective fundraiser for the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society.”
The blog continues:
“But that level of censorious litigiousness was not enough for Charles Carreon. He sought something more. And so, on that same Friday, Charles Carreon also sued the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society, the beneficiaries of Matthew Inman’s fundraiser.”
Popehat’s explanation of Carreon’s allegations as “some good old-fashioned Godwinizing and quasi-Victorian pearl-clutching and couch-fainting” are quite accurate and funny, and the lawyer is accusing The Oatmeal in the suit of “trademark infringement” as well as “incitement to cyber-vandalism.”
