Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2024: Week 10

The Omegaverse Litigation is the commonly used phrase to describe the lawsuits involving two authors: Zoey Ellis and Addison Cain, both of whom wrote romance/erotica novels with "omegaverse" tropes. The lawsuits and their resulting publicity resulted in a number of "mainstream" news outlets reporting on this formerly obscure kink trope.

The instigating event for the lawsuits involved one author (Addison Cain) filing DMCA takedown notices against the other (Zoey Ellis) for alleged plagiarism of her work. In response, Zoey Ellis filed two lawsuits alleging abuse of DMCA takedown notices. The central question of these lawsuits then became whether there was true plagiarism involved, or whether the two works were simply similar because they called upon established hallmarks of the same trope (A/B/O, or Omegaverse).

While the case closed in July of 2020, it continues to be widely discussed online, with many people (both fannish and non-fannish) discovering the existence and history of Omegaverse tropes for the first time via these lawsuits. Additional drama has played out online, particularly surrounding the two videos created by Lindsay Ellis summarising the case