Judge dismisses lawsuit for stealing ideas from “Fake Famous”

‘Fake Celebrity’

Courtesy of HBO

A New York judge has dismissed a producer’s lawsuit against Warner Bros. Discovery, claiming that he had come up with the idea for the plot of HBO’s Fake celebrity Documentary and Max reality series FBOY Island.

The producer, Jack Piuggi, said he had created a reality TV show called Instafamous, The project was touted as “a documentary-style TV show with an embedded pseudo-dating competition” to expose the “superficiality” of Instagram dating culture.

In his lawsuit, filed last year in a New York district court, he alleged that the defendants, which include Good For You Productions LLC, Grand Street Media Inc., HBO and Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc., conspired against him to create “similarly themed” TV projects, resulting in Fake celebrity And FBOY Island.

Piuggi, whose banner is titled “Flipp Productions,” filed suit for copyright infringement, breach of contract and unjust enrichment.

In a July 2 ruling, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero dismissed the lawsuit, finding that Piuggi’s “vague and conclusive allegations of unspecified copying are insufficient” to “plausibly establish a substantial similarity between Instagram-famous and the HBO shows in question.”

The court gave Piuggi the opportunity to assert the claims within 30 days from July 2.

The complaint included allegations that 19 days after Piuggi pitched the idea for his show to Grand Street, HBO released a trailer for Fake celebrity. He also claimed that he suggested that Garrett Morosky, who was eventually chosen for the role of FBOY Islandis supposed to play the main role in his project.

Piuggi “noted several times that many of his concepts for Instagram-famous were appropriated by Fake celebrity”, the lawsuit states.