In September, Pepe The Frog creator Matt Furie decided to get hardcore about protecting his intellectual property when he started filing DMCA takedown requests with Reddit, Amazon, YouTube, and Twitter in an attempt to prevent his now-infamous cartoon from being used as a racist meme by the neo-Nazis who call themselves the “alt-right.” That move came after Furie had already shut down an openly racist children’s book featuring his Pepe character and even tried killing the frog—who began life as an innocent, friendly stoner—in one of his own comics.
Now, with the forces of evil still lacking the basic creativity required to just create their own damn mascot, Furie has been forced to file a lawsuit against InfoWars, the house of lies run by chili monster Alex Jones. That comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which says Furie is suing InfoWars for selling a poster on its website that features Pepe alongside other “heroes” of the far-right, like Jones himself, Milo Yiannopoulos, Roger Stone, and President Shithole.
Here’s a screenshot of the poster in question:
THR predicts that InfoWars could try to claim that Pepe’s appearance is fair use, but the fact that Furie has already licensed the character for “card games and stuffed dolls” could help his lawyer argue that InfoWars’ unauthorized use directly infringes on the copyright.