Chubby Checker sues HP for “chubby checker” app

Lawyers on  behalf of Chubby Checker, a singer most well known for his 1960 cover of 1959 Hank Ballard b-side, The Twist, are sueing Hewlett Packard and Palm for the use of the name “Chubby Checker,” for an app that was used to guess the size of a man's penis.

Apparently Checker's – real name Ernest Evans – legal team is asking for as much as half a billion dollars, for the “irreparable damage and harm,” that it caused to Chubby and his name. While the app was removed from the Palm store back in September 2012, this hasn't stopped Checker going after the two computing firms.

The app, when it was available, purportedly worked by inputting a man's shoe size. At that point the “Chubby Checker,” would pretend to perform some clever calculations and would spit out a number. The developer of the app, Magic Apps, has since gone under according to The Guardian, so Checker can't go after them.

He can of course go after the platform that the app was sold on though, which is HP's Palm system, hence the lawsuit. Apparently he is claiming all profits made from the sale of the, what must have been a quite niche app.

KitGuru Says: It seems pretty unlikely that the “Chubby Checker” made a few million dollars, let alone half a billion. Still, punitive damages can often get up there – it all depends if he has a copyright on the name really, since it isn't even his real one.

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