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

well that's funny

[deathtopaulw]

the first thing I see on the main page is a quote from JKR:
"This is such a great site...my natural home." - JK Rowling
I assume this is a lawyer thing

Re:well that's funny

[burne]

If you read on and visit Rowling's site you will notice something. The story is quite different from what the grandfather-post suggests. Rowling has been helping the lexicon so for. But now the makers of the lexicon intend to make money by publishing a book, and that is where Rowling has to draw the line. She's happy helping fans, but selling books based on her work is a bridge to far.

I take no pleasure in the fact that publication has been prevented for the present. On the contrary, I feel massively disappointed that this matter had to come to court at all. Despite repeated requests, the publishers have refused to even countenance making any changes to the book to ensure that it does not infringe my rights. (source

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:well that's funny

[moggie_xev]

I just wanted to point out that she is writing an encyclopedia the profits from the sale will go to her charity, I believe she has also said if she wins the case the profits from the court case will also go to her charity.

Re:well that's funny

[hdparm]

...which is also tax deductible.

Re:well that's funny

[porl]

because you need to get out more?? :D

Re:well that's funny

[edwardpickman]

It was her choice to stop writing Harry Potter books and she had planned this for a decade so it has nothing to do with running out of ideas.

A lot of people seem to feel the situation is different because she made a billion or so off the Potter series. Why legally has her situation changed since she was an out of work single mother handwriting a novel? She worked for more than a decade creating the characters so why shouldn't she have the right to control her work? If she allows people to freely expand on her work then she looses control and it becomes something she never intended. It happened with Robert E Howard's work after his death. Many other authors added to his mythologies but none of them equaled the original and most were just trying to make a buck off something popular. Nothing is stopping any of these people from creating original works but they know it's easier to get noticed if you lift from something popular. This is more about taking the easy road to success than creating something. She didn't take the easy road so why should others be allowed to ride her coat tails? Rowlings got lucky with the success of the series but I'm thrilled for her. She's not part of the evil empire she's a little person that made good and crossed over. She should be an axample to everyone not some one to villify when she tries to protect her creation.

Re:well that's funny

[A beautiful mind]

This is an example where copyright is fundamentally broken and hinders our culture*. Every work that has been ever been created by humankind is a derivative work of our culture, that is how building a culture works. Copyright criminalizes that process, which is akin to shooting ourselves in the foot.

*Some would say Harry Potter is not the best example of culture.

Re:well that's funny

[unlametheweak]

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. It's a book about a book (to put it simply). No "end run" here.

Re:well that's funny

[Xiaran]

You havent met many accountants have you.

Re:well that's funny

[z0idberg]

If her lawyers are working for free I will eat my hat.

In my very limited opinion it is a grey area as to whether this is infringement or not. According to this post Rowling was planning a similar book the profits of which would go to charity, so she asked Lexicon to at least do the same which they wouldn't do.

If she is so concerned about getting money to her charity then why not make "the official" version of the book and donate the proceeds to charity, then instead of pushing the boundaries of fair use with a potentially long and expensive trial donate the money she would have spent on a trial to her charity as well?

That way at least the pile of money that would have been swallowed up by lawyers fees goes to charity. So what if Lexicon makes some money off it as well? did they not put some time and effort into this? With a trial instead of Lexicon making some money it is the lawyers on both sides that make the money that charity will never see.

This comes across less like forcing the profits of the book to go to charity and more like being bitter about someone else getting a (tiny) slice of money out of the H.P. empire.

Re:well that's funny

[unlametheweak]

I just wanted to point out that she is writing an encyclopedia the profits from the sale will go to her charity, I believe she has also said if she wins the case the profits from the court case will also go to her charity. - Does that mean all gross profits, net profits (how does she and her publishers define net profit) will go to charity?
- Yes, she can still donate to charity with her own Harry Potter encyclopedia etc. I think this would be a selling point over the strictly for-profit encyclopedia.
- Suing for charity. Yes that is an interesting PR move
- I also wander why she just doesn't use one of her other books (old or up-coming) as a charity vehicle, or just give the wads of cash she already has to charity.

Seems to me her charity statements are more like a PR move for suing than an altruistic statement of fact. Rich people with too much idle time can be burdensome.

Re:well that's funny

[Jekler]

I really have to agree with J.K. Rowling on this. The amount of money she made from the series is immaterial. Actions don't become morally right or wrong based on how much money you've made, unless you're a psychopath. The simple fact is, the person who wrote the lexicon wants to make money because it's easier to expand on an already popular work than it is to come up with an original mythos, make it popular, and then write a lexicon for it. If he wanted to undertake the project commercially, the appropriate path would have been to approach the author and publisher and pitch them the idea of a joint project. What he's doing is the equivalent of selling a product called Pepsi Snacks because it's easier to sell something if you associate it with an already popular product. If you just sold "Bob's Snacks", it doesn't have any immediate appeal. Yeah, what a bitch, all she does is write best-selling novels and give huge chunks of money to charity. That's just terrible. I bet there's a special layer of hell reserved for people like that.

Re:well that's funny

[unlametheweak]

A lot of people seem to feel the situation is different because she made a billion or so off the Potter series. The situation IS different. She is a billionaire now (I'm assuming this to be true). She is no longer an unemployed single mother.

She worked for more than a decade creating the characters so why shouldn't she have the right to control her work? She has the right to control her work. She doesn't have a right to control other people's work. Yeah I know in this case the work is based on that of HP. In this case it is not even a fair use derivative work of fiction, it is merely an aid to understanding the fiction.

If she allows people to freely expand on her work then she looses control and it becomes something she never intended. What is this "it" you speak of? "Looses control"? People should not be allowed to control other people; this isn't 1984 this is 2007. We should have learned better by now.

Many other authors added to his mythologies but none of them equaled the original and most were just trying to make a buck off something popular. Who cares. Don't like it, don't buy it.

Nothing is stopping any of these people from creating original works but they know it's easier to get noticed if you lift from something popular. Nobody is stealing here. I haven't read or watched anything HP, I just heard about HP a lot on the news so I don't have any vested interest either way. I remember when I was a kid I would sometimes write stories about Pack Man, Spider Man, etc... with no evil intent. In either case I would suspect that the author in this case probably "stole" a lot of things from other writers, whether it be Shakespeare or contemporary.

She's not part of the evil empire she's a little person that made good and crossed over. You are correct when you say "crossed over". Yes, just like Darth Vader it seems.

She should be an axample to everyone I agree. That's why she should stop the lawsuit and apologize.

Re:well that's funny

[Opportunist]

You also have to see the flipside of it.

If she lets this slide, what's next? A "Harry Potter spinoff" series, where some other wizkids experience adventures at Hogwart (was that the name?), cranked out by the dozen by people who could barely write for daily soaps?

Any kind of good and known brand will get milked, given the chance. At least this time it ain't the original author who got greedy and sold the brand to some company to milk the name 'til it is so tainted and drained that nobody wants to hear about it anymore.

Also, I don't know how much control she still retains over her creation. It's quite possible that she isn't too interested in suing, but the IP holders and their lawyers are.

Re:well that's funny

[GTMoogle]

The lexicon would be a work of research, i.e. cataloging spells, creating a timeline. That kind of work is explicitly protected in copyright law, while a story (ab)using the characters owned by her is not. It's just not the same thing, she's just bitter because her mistaken take on copyright law, like so many people, leads her to believe that she has complete control over everything with the words 'Harry Potter' on it.

What she plans to do with her money (charity, hookers, whatever) doesn't make a bit of difference, and doesn't oblige the publishers of the lexicon in any way.

The one thing the publishers can't claim is that theirs is official or endorsed. That alone gives Rowling plenty enough of a head-start for her own encyclopedia potter, along with her ability to add details to the world that don't already exist. The lexicon can't do that, or else it loses some validity of its claim to be research if it doesn't extrapolate from known facts (The books, things Rowling's said publicly already).

Now Rowling's best case is probably that she contributed to the website and now her work is going to be used for profit that she doesn't want it to be. Any tacit click-through agreement saying the works contributed belong to the publisher probably won't hold up in court, and it's a valid complaint on J.K's part - but they only need to excise her contributions and continue on a bit unofficially less endorsed.

Really that's the sleaziest thing the lexicon's trying to do IMO and it has proper recourse. The courts should toss J.K. out on her ass for the case that she's actually bringing.

Re:well that's funny

[afidel]

Hmm, who do I want to lose more, the idiot trying to quash fair use rights or the idiots with right click scripts and clickthrough licenses.

Re:well that's funny

[jam244]

And there's the horcrux of the matter.

Fixed that for you.

Re:well that's funny

[Saint Fnordius]

I disagree mainly because it is an unofficial guide. It is more like some of the unofficial guides to video games with the cheat codes and walkthroughs, Though the names and such are listed, it is a reference and not a case of plagiarism. It clearly requires the original works to be of value.

This case does bear strong resemblance to the lawsuits in the 1990's intended to prevent those books, mainly because the game publishers wanted to stifle competition for the "official" guides. I also remember Adobe even got into the act, trying to forbid a "missing manual" publisher of using screenshots.

The hubris and asshattery on both sides aside, there really should not be an issue with the publication of this book. It is just another in a long line of "unofficial guides".

Re:well that's funny

[Khelder]

In my very limited opinion it is a grey area as to whether this is infringement or not. According to this post Rowling was planning a similar book the profits of which would go to charity, so she asked Lexicon to at least do the same which they wouldn't do.

Copyright gives authors certain rights with respect to works they've already created, not ones they're just thinking about or may create in the future. If she was planning to do a similar book, that explains her motivation, but has no bearing on whether the Lexicon infringes her copyright on existing Harry Potter books.

Re:well that's funny

[Orion_]

I've only watched the first movie, and after that I don't feel like watching or reading any other Harry Potter movie or novel. And would you have also concluded from watching the equally bad 1984 theatrical version of Dune that the entire Dune series wasn't worth reading?

Not saying I think they're worth reading, just saying that's a really stupid reason not to.

Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture.

[MikeFM]

Well - she seems to have ran out of stuff to write about Harry Potter so I guess her creative abilities have came and gone leaving her with only a few billion dollars to show for it. Time to start getting sue crazy over IP. Evidently she doesn't realize how much like Voldemort SCO was and how like Harry Potter Linux is. She is on the wrong side. Never thought she'd become a Death Eater.

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

[1u3hr]

You are legally required to aggressively defend your IPR, otherwise you lose it. Hate the game, not the playa.

No, you are not. This is a common misconception. It applies, if at all, only to trademarks ("Kleenex". "Xerox"), not copyright (this case).

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

[NickCatal]

Obviously you did not see the sarcasm in jay's post

I support the idea of having a lexicon/wiki/whatever. But going out and trying to sell the information that is inside the books is taking it too far.

If you wrote a book, would you want someone taking all the facts out of your book and publishing it for their own profit? This isn't fair use here. If these people wanted to make the sparknotes of Harry Potter, helping the reader understand the books, that is fine. The writer of the notes isn't taking away any money from the author and is adding their own content. This is literally taking every fact out of all 7 books and publishing them for a profit, and not sharing that money with the author.

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

[fractoid]

She's a billionaire who has profited from it. It's not like she is in the gutter eating scraps of food. Let me rephrase the GP's post:

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

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

[jotok]

Ok. So, how much money should I get to make off of my IP before I don't get to profit anymore?

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

[tmk]

You are legally required to aggressively defend your IPR, otherwise you lose it. Hate the game, not the playa.

That is a common error. You don't loose rights when you refuse to sue people. A few weeks ago I read a story about someone who did a parody of a website, he used logos and design which are clearly copyrighted. And what happened? The company did not sue the author, they gave him a license for his parody. They did not lose any intellectual property, the did not pay any lawyer or court and they had free publicity. The parody was clearly no competition for them.

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

[totally bogus dude]

Them's the breaks when you create something that enters the popular culture. Do you believe that third-parties shouldn't be allowed to sell "unauthorised" software for Windows because that would be preventing Microsoft from making a profit from all the hard work they did creating Windows? If so, then fine; I disagree, but at least you have a consistent position. If you disagree with that, then how is this different?

The content on the Lexicon seems to have taken a lot of time, effort and attention to detail (i.e. hard work) to create, and the author has made it available for free (presumably supported by ads, which may or may not pay for the site). It seems Rowling actually likes the site and doesn't have a problem with it if it's available for free. If people would be willing to pay for such content in book form, then why shouldn't he be able to make a profit from his own hard work? So long as he's not copying from the books so much that it would fail the "fair use" provisions, I can't see how there's a problem with this.

Her whole argument seems to be that she "plans" to release a companion book "one day", and if there's already a companion book it might decrease sales. What I think is that this third-party companion book created by a mere fan would be better than her own book, and she knows this -- and therefore yes, that may well hurt sales. Tough biscuits.

This seems like just another case of a commercial entity failing to meet consumer demand for their IP, and trying to sue anyone who DOES step up to meet that demand. Meeting consumer demand is pretty much the cornerstone of our entire economic system. What's more, in this case, meeting that demand isn't just a matter of providing the copyrighted content in a more convenient format (ala torrents), but providing supporting material which enhances the copyrighted content. It adds value.

Also, how many books are there in the Harry Potter series? Most fans seem to have bought them all. I don't think they'll hesitate to buy an "official" companion book as well as an unofficial one. ;P

Another thought: why not partner with this guy to release an official companion book and split the proceeds?

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

[LingNoi]

Are you seriously proposing that she wouldn't make any more money because of this website?

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

[Bloke down the pub]

No, I am saying she is so rich that why does she even care if someone makes a few $100 because of her.

That sounds more like yes.

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

[arose]

But going out and trying to sell the information that is inside the books is taking it too far.

No it's not, factual information isn't and shouldn't be protected.

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

[elFisico]

I support the idea of having a lexicon/wiki/whatever. But going out and trying to sell the information that is inside the books is taking it too far. Wrong. Information is free (well, it used to be and it definitely should). It is the physical representation of that information that gets protection, via copyright or patents.

So Rowling is clearly in the wrong if she insists that the whole H.P. universe is protected because she invented it. Only her words describing that universe are protected. The lexicon has every right to collect and write about each and every item in that universe, using the exact names and concepts and so forth. But it must not use any of Rowlings sentences to do so...

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.

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

[ericlondaits]

No, "fair use" as a protection is based on the length of the extracts use from the original, and in how much monetary value it takes from it.

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!

Re:The ultimate lawyer-keep-away strategy?

[aproposofwhat]

RightClickus Enabluis!

<Harry:> Wow, Hernione, you fixed that for them!

:P

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!?!?

The article claims this happens more often

[SmallFurryCreature]

Other popular universes might be Star Wars, Star Trek, the Discworld etc etc. How many of these have books published that are NOT sanctioned by the original copyright holder?

All those Star Trek tech manuals, or star wars art books, or the discworld science books are ALL published with the blessing of Paramount, Lucasfilm and Terry Pratchet. (The ones I got at least)

So are there any books out there that do something similar that were NOT officially sanctioned. I am not talking about parodies like Star Wrecked, these fall under different laws.

Movies spawn novells, these also seem to be often written with the blessing of the studio.

So where is the evidence that this kinda of thing is common practice?

This site is NOT a synopsis or a review or even a discussion site. It is clearly a product designed to work of the original content by extending it. Selling it for money makes it clear they are profitting of someone elses work.

While some one slashdot favor a more lenient copyright system, I think even the most rabid filesharer usually is against people who pirate for profit.

There is a real issue here, who owns the rights to for instance a 3D model of an x-wing. Worse, who owns the rights to a picture of a light-saber. Does it become a Star Wars image because someone hold a sword of light OR does it have to have Jedi written all over it before it becomes a Star Wars image.

But as intresting a discussion as that is, it doesn't apply here. If you browse the site you can clearly see that this is a 100% ripoff of the original work that would have no value on its own. It doesn't fall under the rules for a biography, it is not parody. Fair use is about using a limited amount of someone elses work in your own work.

So how much of this site is their own work and how much that of the original author? I don't think it is a simple measurement, if I produce a detailed layout of the Enterprise, then the resulting blueprint may well be 99% my own work, but that 1% that makes it the enterprise also puts it firmly in the hands of Paramount. Without that 1% it wouldjust be a blueprint, it is their original work that makes it 'worth' something.

Look at it that way, would this site be worth anything without the original work. No, I don't think so.

So I think in this case the copyright/trademark? holder is correct. They tolerated the site because it wasn't commericial, but printing it is clearly designed to earn money. Sorry, but if you want to profit of someone elses original work to such a degree, you got to get their permission first.

Re:The article claims this happens more often

[erroneus]

Let's be clear and simple on this point:

Copyright is about the right to copy something. There are rules about fair use and how much copying versus original content is allowed. In this case, it would seem NO amount of copyrighted material was extracted and used, but rather statistics and facts about the series of works are being written.

And the question of "who owns the facts" has been up in the air for a while. Let's look at sports statistics and facts. The various parties in control of profiting from baseball, for example, have started lawsuits against publication of histories, stats, facts and figures related to baseball. "Who owns the facts" is a big deal.

Initially, I was thinking "not copyright -- it can't apply! they must be talking about trademark or some other intellectual property." This is not the case either. This is a [potentially] useful collection of information about the series.

And to pick another slashdot favorite parallel reference: The Church of Scientology often threatens and sues for copyright infringement for very similar activities. Often listing facts, histories and statistics about the CoS results in "copyright" related legal activity where the CoS is the plaintiff.

Who owns the facts?! How far can this "fact owning" notion go? Can people get sued by paramount for the creation and listing of the number of times that Spock says the word "Logic" or "Logical" for the purposes of a drinking game?

This is an important issue and it should really be put to the test and laid out clearly in precedent or law for it to be clear to everyone. "WHO OWNS THE FACTS?"

writers, journalists, harry potter fans

[cynicsreport]

A journalist should be allowed to write a review on a book, and be paid for it.
A professor should be able to publish an article interpreting the newest published literature.
A Harry Potter junkie should be able to write a book analyzing the lexicon in the novels.

It's a double standard; the journalist and professor are safe, but the Harry Potter fan gets sued.

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.

Re:she's right

[Anonymous Coward]

Has free use really become so squashed and such a fairy-tale that you cannot even create factual works about someone elses work anymore? This is obvious free use and even with verbatim passages lifted from her book I still think that's free use.

You!!

[fractoid]

Fail!!

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

Good

[Zorque]

Sure, sure, mod me down, but I don't agree with them trying to make money off of her name. Sure, if it was free (which it was in website form, and of which Rowling herself approved), it'd be great. But I really don't think it's OK for them to profit off of this. I'm sure many people here would be incensed to find out they'd paid money for a pirated copy of an album (I know this is different, but they're both IP issues), and I know if you'd created a bunch of highly successful books you wouldn't make them public domain either (you will probably say that you would, but honestly... would you really pass up the chance to actually make money off of your hard work?).

"imaginary property"

[richie2000]

I think we should use the phrase imaginary property much more often.

Re:"imaginary property"

[A beautiful mind]

I'll pay you with an imaginary 0+4i dollars for your imaginary property.

Stallman to the rescue...

[Orthuberra]

No Slashdot thread is complete without RMS's opinion on the matter.

Re:Stallman to the rescue...

[jonas_jonas]

Much more interesting than Stallman's opinion is an article from 2003 linked by Stallman: http://www.slate.com/id/2084960/

Right-click disablers are evil

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one of those internet rules. The party with the right-click disabling script is always wrong no matter what. No exceptions. Kill it with fire.

Re:she's right

[unlametheweak]

It's about intellectual property, as long as this concept, however wrong it is, will be defendable, I'll encourage Janet to sue. Interesting point. If these laws exist then it would make sense that people would exploit them. These lawsuits expose the laws (and the people who use them) for what they are. Hopefully this will encourage copyright reform in the manner that patent abuse has brought about (an attempt) at patent reform in the US.

Not Surprised

[libcrypto]

J. K. Rowling's lawyers seems to be on a suing spree.. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=487334&in_page_id=1811 This one they lost.

Re:she's right

[unlametheweak]

Just an addendum and a couple of comments in general:

Note, that in the beginning (post Napster but when when Kazaa was popular), I used to argue with RL friends that file sharing was theft. Then the RIAA started getting aggressive and I started hearing a lot of arguments in favour of DRM and harsh laws involving intellectual property. The pro-IP crowd has educated me quite a lot since then. I am now (pretty much) in favour of laws against DRM and the like. When it comes to IP, then let it be free. If you have something that can make the world a better place (music, literature, etc) and only want rich people to enjoy it- then too bad. Don't make those things in the first place. Life isn't fair, isn't meant to be fair, and never will be; but it would certainly be MORE fair without IP. Thanks IRAA et al for educating me.

From the article:

and the lexicon website itself using one of those insipid right click disabling scripts High priced lawyers should get an idea. I feel tempted, but no I won't tell them how to get around this rather lame form of DRM... Let them hire an over-priced computer consultant :P

She has failed in legal action before

[Chrisq]

She failed previously to sue for "generic" use of characters. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7040191.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7041863.stm

Trademark not Copyright

[mdmkolbe]

Intellectual Property doesn't exist as a legal concept. Only Patent, Copyright and Trademark exist and they are very different. Lumping to them together under one rubric clouds the issue. So lets see which of these she could file suit under.

Patent

Even our patent office isn't that crazy. No suit here.

Copyright

Copyright only covers the form of expression not the ideas expressed. So unless she was a material contributer or the lexicon copied large sections of her books, there's no successful routs for suit here either.

Trademark

This one is close enough that a good lawyer might be able to win on Trademark grounds.

Fictional characters can be Trademarked. So if I go around drawing pictures of Donald Duck for a living, I could be liable even though the actual drawing was all my own original work. The idea is that the franchise and brand association could be weakened by such an action. So the "Harry Potter Action Toy" would be a clear Trademark violation, but the "Lexicon of Recent Popular Fantasy" probably wouldn't be. It all depends on the details of what words are used and how they are used.

Also, there are unfortunately far reaching incentives to pursue trivial Trademark infringements. If Rowling doesn't enforce the Trademark, she could loose the rights to it. Many companies fear these sorts of leaks in the dike especially since several companies have run into trouble with it (e.g. Xerox, Frisbie (but I think they eventually kept their Trademarks)).

All in all, this is a fairly weak suit for Rowling, but not necessarily frivolous. It all depends on the details.

Re:"Factual Content" ? NOT.

[thebigmacd]

Actually it is factual content; factual content about the series. It's not factual content about real life. You'd have to be a real Harry Potter nerd to get those two confused.

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.

Seriously?

[supercrisp]

I'm an English prof. My shelves are full of books that regurgitate the facts of the books they address. They're called "reference works." A lot work goes into them, and they're often quite useful. Yet they can in no way replace the books they are about. Novels and such are textual works of art. Reference books are not. They are references to works of art, useful for study, which is what I'm guessing Rowling fanatics do with this info on Hairy Pooter. But those reference books, useful they may be, just aren't the thrill of reading the Real Thing(tm).

Ideas cannot be copyrighted!!

[elFisico]

Only the words describing an idea can be copyrighted. So while it has been common courtesy to ask an author before you write novels set in his or her universe, it is not required by law. And this is rightly so, because the work lies in crafting the words, not in having the idea.

If I would write another H.P. novel, I would have all the work, so I should get the money, no? You might say that Rowling developed all the characters and should be compensated for that work. I say, she already has been compensated und I had to work hard to get the feeling for the characters and "get them right". So I clearly should be compensated for that work also. The only thing that Rowling can try to enforce is the "Harry Potter" trademark.

But of course greed makes you see things differently...

(IANAL, so my information about and interpretation of copyright law may be wrong, but my moral basics tell me that this is the way it should be)

It's probably not about the money

[Tyrannosaurs]

If you look at Rowling's history in matters of licensing, you'll tend to find that if she's anything she's a control freak rather than greedy. The contract with WB for the films gives her a near unprecidented level of control over the films, and she personally reviews many of the merchandising proposals.

Her concerns tend to be around keeping Harry "pure" - that is retaining control over how everything around it is presented, rather than wringing every last penny out of it.

In this instance it will be about wanting a single authorative lexicon, rather than multiple competing ones, some of which will not fit her vision of things, meet the quality standards she wants or whatever.

I'm not saying that this is right/legal/good, just that claims of greed show little understanding about the individual they are being made against and are probably wrong.

Satire solves everything

[sadangel]

Simple. Re-title the book "The Lexicon of the Godless World of the Evil Harry Potter and his Stupid Friends". Presto! Suddenly it's satire and protected speech.

Re:she's right

[nightcats]

Nope, she's wrong, and I hope the courts say so too. Preventing people from doing literary criticism and background is Death Eater stuff. I wrote a book that two different (and very successful) NYC lit agents loved, which failed to make it all because pubs fear Rowling, WB, Bloomsbury/Scholastic, and their lawyers. So now it's rotting away on lulu.com, and whatever merit it contains is lost.

One of the teachings in that book is this: Wealth is poison; it murders from within. Lucius Malfoy ("bad faith") killed himself with wealth before he embarked on his career as a Death Eater. Rowling has allowed herself to be turned into a corporate person -- such a "corpse" will never rest in peace.

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..."

NOT Fair Use.

[BobGregg]

From the Fair Use doctrine itself:

"...criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research..."

No. There is no "benefit for society" rationale for this. This is a private, commercial work, done purely for the author's own profit. There is nothing "fair use" about this book AT ALL.

On the other hand, there is an interesting question of whether it actually infringes on *copyright*, per se, due to not really using significant portions of the original work, at least not word-for-word. But that's a different issue.

When people water down the meaning of Fair Use, they're poisoning the well for legitimate uses of it, which are already being trampled left and right.

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Re:IANAL, but I am in Law School

[Pope]

Where are you in law school? The US and UK have different laws concerning copyrights, you know.

The entire purpose of copyright

[lemur337]

is this:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. It seems likely that U.K. copyright and patent laws were formulated with similar intent. So Rowling is done producing "useful Arts" based on her characters. Let some else bring us some more "useful Arts" we can enjoy.

That's the whole point of copyright, and patents for that matter. This point got lost somewhere along the road to unrestricted corporatism.

Re:Take a hike, Rowling!

[Aris Katsaris]

"Do you see the C.S. Lewis estate suing folks who write books about the Narnia series?" The difference between "estates" and original authors morally dilutes the issue IMO. The "estate" are themselves secondary people benefitting from the original author's work. In my opinion, the original author has a greater moral right to restricting things than his mere legal heirs. JKR helped the hp-lexicon people. The HP lexicon owes everything to her work. Then the hp-lexicon people disrespect her wishes -- not her *estate's* wishes, but her own wishes. Let them burn in hell.

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Re:IANAL, but I am in Law School

[bitslinger_42]

You may be right, and since I'm not even studying to be a lawyer, I'll presume you are, but this still illustrates how fundamentally broken the copyright system is. Producing study guides on major works has been a staple of literary study for a really long time. Many, many original authors (i.e. Rowling) would never produce such a guide themselves, since writing a guide is significantly different from writing a novel. Where in the hell do they get off believing that they should get a cut off of the labor of someone else? This is just as stupid as that condo association in Chicago that is trying to prevent people from taking pictures of the building that they live in.

Rowling became filthy rich from the Potter world. Good for her. Just because she was successful there shouldn't mean that she (and her children, and her grandchildren) should be guaranteed profit from the labor of anyone else in the world that does something related to that world. It takes a serious amount of work to produce a lexicon such as this; it isn't just a matter of "their minimal contribution in reassembling work". It takes several passes through a work, first recording the names of people, places, etc and on what pages the references occur. Then, go back through each of the terms listed and attempt to pull out a short, meaningful description of them. Next, go back through and try to make sure that you've dealt with all of the various ways that a given thing is referred to, such as He Who Must Not Be Named as an alias for Voldemort. Finally, put everything in some order (typically alphabetical) and do the formal typesetting, etc. I know a guy that wrote a reference guide to the works of James Joyce, and it took him YEARS of work to complete.

Should Rowling be able to make money from her own labor? Sure. Should she have a say in whether some other author can use the characters in new stories or in other products (i.e. the Hitachi Harry Potter Magic Wand, the Hermione G-String Bikini, etc.)? Definitely. Should she be able to prevent people from producing literary criticism, study guides, and scholarly works that are ABOUT the Potter world? Absofuckinglutely not!

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Copyright should even be applies here.

[geekoid]

Copyright applies to the work.

" to produce copies or reproductions of the work and to sell those copies"
They aren't copying the works and reselling them.

"to import or export the work"
There aren't importing or exporting the harry potter books.

"works that adapt the original work"
The aren't doing that either.

"to perform or display the work publicly"
The aren't performing or displaying the Harry Potter works.

"to sell or assign these rights to others"
They aren't assigning rights to the harry potter books

Those are the ONLY rights the copyright holder can exercise.

Creating a work about another work is not a violation. See numerous books about Tolkien's work.
This is like saying Rolling Stone Magazine can't talk about specific music, or that movie reviews can't talk about movies, or that dummies books on visual basic violate Microsoft's copyright.

Just imagine Shakespeare in a copyright world

[an.echte.trilingue]

Every single work written by arguably the greatest author in the English language (Shakespeare), just like every single work written by the arguably greatest author in the French language (Molière) heavily incorporated elements from previous authors well beyond the standard that we would call "copyright infringement" today. All modern scientific progress is built on the works of others. True human genius is cumulative.

Now, I understand the logic behind copyright and patent laws in modern society: we wish to give an incentive to creators to create by giving them unfettered rights to what they create. I also agree that we need to have a system in place to encourage creation.

However, it seems to me that we are reifying the practice: something that we as a society have constructed and continue to construct is being treated as a right in and of itself. I think that JK Rowling and all of the people associated with the "Harry Potter" machine have made enough that the objective of our copyright laws is being fulfilled. It is time for them to let it go.

But they won't. And that is what is scary: our culture is being taken from us and given to corporations. There is no legitimate reason that Mickey Mouse, which is part of our culture and should be free for us all, should still be covered under copyright. Walt Disney is dead. His children are rich (sort of).

The process is hardly conducive to the creation of more culture. Look at the music industry, where this process has advanced the most: has any really good music been published on a wide scale lately? No? Then lets get rid of the institution that no longer fulfill its purpose.

I have a right to my culture. You have a right to your fan fiction, to your culture.

very simple case

[drDugan]

Rowling and her lawyers don't "own" the harry potter universe. There is no legal vehicle for owning whole concepts - save patents which restrict the practice to specific claims. She has copyright and trademarks and other legal rights defined by states who have (until recently) the monopoly on military force to enforce it. Copyright does not apply here, unless she is pressing the fair use limits which on my read of the site, this is clearly within a reasonable legal scope. In no place have I seen diligent enforcement of trademarks on the content I read in the site, so I assume the book will not violate her trademarks.

So, the premise of the lawsuit is flawed, and will most likely fail. ironically, the effect is exactly opposite to the seemingly intended result - stopping the book. Rowling's dogs have given a bunch of free press for the effort and the book will have much better sales as a result.

Balance.

Cliff Notes

[MooseTick]

I wonder how Cliff Notes fall into this category. I'm sure they don't get approval for every book they summarize, analyze, quote, and review.

Re:she's right

[LrdDimwit]

No. This is a copyright infringement suit, not a trademark case. Trademark law does work the way you describe -- if you do not defend a trademark, you can lose all protection to it. Trademarks are supposed to identify that the trademarked item comes from a particular source; if world+dog can use it without interference, this vanishes and so does the protection. There are number of high-profile cases of this happening to existing trademarks (see below), so most big corporations with very valuable brand names are quite paranoid about allowing them to be diluted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirin#Trademark_issues
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark

No comparable mechanism exists for copyright. Copyright holders are free to prosecute whoever they want, and ignore other infringers. There are a couple of defenses (if you tell someone they can do something, for instance, you can't sue them anymore) but generally, a copyright holder is perfectly free to leave websites alone and go after those same people for selling deadtree versions of the exact same content. It so happens in this case they have a weak case, but for other reasons (fair use reasons).

Were it done any other way, one of the consequences would be that all fanfiction would have to be cracked down on (otherwise the owners would lose all copyrights). While a lot of people like to make cracks about how bad much fanfiction is, I don't think many would argue it ought to be cracked down on indiscriminately.

It's to late for Rowling to change her mind.

[SETIGuy]

She visits the site. She is aware of its existence. She has participated in its development. She has given implied consent to its existence.

Now all of a sudden she has decided it is a copyright violation. Apparently it wasn't yesterday, but today it is because the owners want to make money from it.

The intent of the owners does NOT change whether the site is a copyright violation. If it wasn't a violation yesterday, its not a violation today just because someone might make a penny.

Haven't you made enough fucking money off this crap anyway?