Harry Potter Lexicon – the sequel

Remember the court battle between Rowlings and the publishers of the Harry Potter Lexicon? Well much like the books and films this court case will not go away either. This was on the blog Recording Industry vs. the People:

“Copyright and Fair Use” at Stanford Law School reports that the defendant publisher, RDR Books, has filed an appeal from the Judge’s decision in Warner Bros. Pictures v. RDR Books, the case involving the Harry Patter Lexicon.

The Judge, after a bench trial, issued an injunction and statutory damages of $6750 holding that the Lexicon was not protected by fair use due to (a) sloppiness in attribution in sections, (b) the length of some of the quotes, and (c) imitation of J.K. Rowling’s writing style in portions.

I recently wrote an article criticizing the opinion, but doubting that an appeal would be taken in view of the small damages award.

Just goes to show that even court cases have sequels…

Rowlings v Harry Potter Lexicon

The Harry Potter Lexicon case has been decided in favor of JK Rowling. In the Sydney Morning Herald report on the case Rowling stated that:

“The (Lexicon) took an enormous amount of my work and added virtually no original commentary of its own. Now the court has ordered that it must not be published”…

“Many books have been published which offer original insights into the world of Harry Potter. The Lexicon just is not one of them.”

The problem was that the Harry Potter Lexicon failed to show fair use (more on this aspect).

(via The House of Commons)

Technollama has written a much better review of the whole affair so hop on your broom and wiz over and read it…. This is a hot issue online right now check out the article Fans and Copyright Issues on Plagiarism Today and JKR/WB vs. RDR Books Trial: Findings of Fact & Conclusions of Law (pt 1) and the trial transcripts at the Leaky Cauldron.