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Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant (born December 9, 1933 in London, England) is an author and syndicated cartoonist living in Santa Barbara, California. He is best known for Pot-Shots, a single-panel comic of illustrated one-liners, which began syndication in the United States in 1975. The Wall Street Journal described him in a 1992 profile as "history's only full time, professional published epigrammatist." In a copyright infringement suit filed by Brilliant, a U.S. federal judge has ruled that, while short phrases are not eligible for copyright, Brilliant's writings were epigrams and, therefore, copyrightable (Brilliant v. W.B. Productions Inc., 1979). He employs a self-imposed limit of 17 words per epigram. In 1999 he authored the famed (and often-copied-without-credit) "Y1K Crisis" article which parodies the "Y2K Crisis" (Year 2000 Crisis) of 1999.
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