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

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

[heinousjay]

Seriously, who does this woman think she is? All she did was all the hard work in creating something. Who is she to profit from it?

Re:well that's funny

[Kierthos]

Did the publishers of those books make a deal with the publishers of the Harry Potter books? Unless we're talking about those "fanfic" Chinese HP books, I'll bet they did.

And there's the crux of the matter. If the publishers/creators/whatever of this lexicon had sat down and hammered out a deal with the HP publishers, there wouldn't be a court case. But it looks like they're trying to do an end run around those publishers, possibly in order to keep all the potential cash for themselves.

Which is damned foolish, considering the amount of money they're going to have spend on lawyers.

Re: suing for charity...

[Macthorpe]

Do some actual charity work yourself, Rowling. rather than farming it out. Here's a link where JK wrote two books specifically for charity.

Consider this a learning experience.