Rowling Sues Harry Potter Lexicon

Snape kills Trinity with Rosebud writes "Apparently famous authors don't like it if you try to make a buck using their imaginary property because J.K. Rowling is suing the publishers of the Harry Potter Lexicon for infringement. This should prove an interesting test case for fair use given that the lexicon contains mostly factual information about the series, not copies of the books' text. Of course, both sides seem a bit touchy about imaginary property rights, with Rowling's lawyers being miffed after being told to print it themselves when they asked for a paper copy of the lexicon's website, and the lexicon website itself using one of those insipid right click disabling scripts."

Comments

The ultimate lawyer-keep-away strategy?

[FredDC]

... with Rowling's lawyers being miffed after being told to print it themselves when they asked for a paper copy of the lexicon's website, and the lexicon website itself using one of those insipid right click disabling scripts."

This will probably keep them busy for a while!

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

the lexicon contains mostly factual information

And all this time I thought it was a work of fiction. You mean magic is real!?!?

Re:writers, journalists, harry potter fans

[Roger W Moore]

There's a reason:

A journalist has a publisher standing behind them who can afford to buy lawyers.
A professor has a university with a law faculty standing behind them which makes lawyers.
A Harry Potter junkie has their significant other standing behind them wondering why on earth they spend their time writing all that stuff.

You!!

[fractoid]

Fail!!

Like most present, you have never brought both subject and comment together... :P

Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture.

[Jesus_666]

She's a billionaire who has profited from it. It's not like she is in the gutter eating scraps of food.

Well, technically she is, but British cuisine has always been rather peculiar.

Ego

[microTodd]

All discussion here about how much right an author/imaginer has to "protect" their property, I suspect a lot of this is ego. Ms. Rowling is probably very protective of her work because she thinks she's the greatest writer since Charles Dickens.

See following quote: "In February 2007 Rowling issued a statement on her website about finishing the final book, in which she compared her mixed feelings of "mourning" and "incredible sense of achievement" to those expressed by Charles Dickens in the preface of the 1850 edition of David Copperfield, "a two-years' imaginative task." "To which," she added, "I can only sigh, try seventeen years, Charles...""

I mean, wow. That's like me reading John Carmack's .plan and saying, "Oh John, if only you had to work on my XML-driven timesheet application..."