Rowling Suits Up
November 1, 2007 by Kelly Phillips Erb
Filed under Parenting
J.K. Rowling, together with Warner Bros., has filed suit against Michigan publisher RDR Books to stop the company from releasing a book based on material from a Potter fan web site. The book, Harry Potter Lexicon, was scheduled for a November 28 publication.
Rowling claims that the book, taken from items posted on the Harry Potter Lexicon web site, will infringe on Rowling’s intellectual property rights. She also claims that the proposed book would also clash with her own plans to create the definitive Harry Potter encyclopedia.
RDR Books publisher Roger Rapoport stated in an Associated Press report that his house’s title “only promotes the sale of J.K. Rowling’s work and we intend to publish on schedule as planned.”
In response to the suit, RDR had this to say:
The Lexicon is written by one of the world’s leading academic scholars on the Potter series, Steve Vander Ark. He regularly keynotes major academic conferences on Potter in America, Canada and Britain. His website of the same name attracts more than 25 million visitors annuallyÑincluding Ms. Rowling, her editors, the directors of her movies, her agents and readers around the world. Vander Ark, a librarian, directs a volunteer team of professors, reference librarians and other experts, who have been highly praised for their scholarship and dedication to the series.
One of the highest compliments has been paid by the lead plaintiff in the suit, Warner Bros., which has taken Mr. Vander Ark’s copyrighted Harry Potter timeline and included it without permission among the Extra Features on three Harry Potter DVDs and intends to use it on the upcoming Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix DVD. Mr. VanderArk also is scheduled to appears in a one-hour interview on the Extra Features section of the new DVD.
You can read more from the publisher here.
What do you think? Is the lawsuit deserved? Does Rowling sound a little too protective of Harry? Is it fair?
Ms Rowling is the owner of her own Harry Potter stories, but she is not the owner of Harry Potter anymore. When she published them, the persona turned independent and can be impersonated or articulated by the public. She used many ideas of public domain, so the persona now belongs to the public domain. All this suit is about money and the possibility of doing more money and impeding others to do money. All in all, this is a piece old greediness shared by some lawyers willing to earn their from it.
Hey, don’t blame the lawyers! I am one, and I have to say, in this instance, I can’t imagine a lawyer picking up this matter and running with it without significant input from Rowling and Warner Bros. Besides, unlike medical malpractice and class action suits, the outcome of this lawsuit wouldn’t be a monetary award, it would be an injunction to stop the publication of the other works. The lawyers wouldn’t get a “cut” of anything, just their regular fee.
If you want to talk greed, I’m thinking it’s coming from the studios.