J. K. Rowling Wins $6,750 In Infringement Case

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "J. K. Rowling didn't make enough money on Harry Potter, so she had to make sure that the 'Harry Potter Lexicon' was shut down. After a trial in Manhattan in Warner Bros. v. RDR Books, she won, getting the judge to agree with her (and her friends at Warner Bros. Entertainment) that the 'Lexicon' did not qualify for fair use protection. In a 68-page decision (PDF) the judge concluded that the Lexicon did a little too much 'verbatim copying,' competed with Ms. Rowling's planned encyclopedia, and might compete with her exploitation of songs and poems from the Harry Potter books, although she never made any such claim in presenting her evidence. The judge awarded her $6,750 and granted her an injunction that would prevent the 'Lexicon' from seeing the light of day." Groklaw has an exhaustive discussion of the judgement.

Comments

What does her wealth have to do with it?

[cartman94501]

I was not aware that society's subjective judgment of whether someone has made "enough" money from one's intellectual property was a factor in copyright law. Either there's a copyright infringement or there isn't. Rowling's wealth and success are irrelevant.

Re:What does her wealth have to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course society's subjective judgment is important - if you don't make "enough" from your "intellectual property" you can't very well pay the lawyers to defend it, can you?

Re:What does her wealth have to do with it?

[CrackedButter]

The opening sentence is terrible, talk about putting a personal spin on it. Rowling's wealth and success means she can't be a victim? Kdawson is an idiot.

Re:What does her wealth have to do with it?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Kdawson is an idiot for not removing the personal bias from the blurb.

Point of order. Why is it wrong for a Slashdot post to express an opinion? Especially where the submitter provided the actual, 68-page, decision so that readers can make up their own mind.

Re:What does her wealth have to do with it?

[sammy baby]

Not only that, but Ms. Rowling explicitly said that she had no objection if the Lexicon continues to be published for free on the web.

It's really, really hard for me to get worked up over this.

Re:What does her wealth have to do with it?

[kesuki]

"Why is it wrong for a Slashdot post to express an opinion?"

Because of the borg, you will be assimilated, resistance is futile. opinion must be shared by all, or not exist. there can be no bias, except that of the slashdrone. there must be no argument on what is right, for the slashdrones can not argue.

Re:What does her wealth have to do with it?

[morgan_greywolf]

You're confusing 'standing to sue' with 'losing a trademark'.

In the U.S. (and probably in the U.K., too), if you become financially damaged in a given situation, and you knowingly allowed that situation to occur, you lose your standing to sue by failing to mitigate your own damages. This is called the 'doctrine of laches' and is a form of estoppel.

Hold your horses!

[AKAImBatman]

J. K. Rowling didn't make enough money on Harry Potter, so she had to make sure that the 'Harry Potter Lexicon' was shut down.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up a moment! NewYorkCountryLawyer, I normally respect your posts, but this one is in need of some serious scrutiny.

As it happens, I was listening to the details of the case this morning on NPR. The problem with this specific book is not that it focuses on the Harry Potter series. The problem is that nearly every description was lifted from the books in a reasonably clear case of plagerism and/or derivitive works. Most reference books contain unique descriptions and commentary above and beyond the information presented in the source material. However, this particular lexicon made no effort to add such value over the books themselves.

In effect, it was merely a reorganization of J.K. Rowling's books into a dry reference. Something for which only the author has a legal right to grant.

THAT is why the judge found against the lexicon. And he did so with a strong warning that this book is an exception to the usually legal practice:

Issuing an injunction in this case both benefits and harms the public interest. While the Lexicon, in its current state, is not a fair use of the Harry Potter works, reference works that share the Lexicon's purpose of aiding readers of literature generally should be encouraged rather than stifled. As the Supreme Court suggested in Campbell, "[b]ecause the fair use enquiry often requires close questions of judgment as to the extent of permissible borrowing" in cases involving transformative uses, granting an injunction does not always serve the goals of copyright law, when the secondary use, though edifying in some way, has been found to surpass the bounds of fair use. Campbell, 510 U.S. at 578 n.10. On the other hand, to serve the public interest, copyright law must "prevent[] the misappropriation of the skills, creative energies, and resources which are invested in the protected work." Apple Computer, 714 F.2d at 1255. Ultimately, because the Lexicon appropriates too much of Rowling's creative work for its purposes as a reference guide, a permanent injunction must issue to prevent the possible proliferation of works that do the same25 and thus deplete the incentive for original authors to create new
works.

Re:Hold your horses!

[Rayeth]

As evidenced by the thousands of Harry Potter supplement books that are already on the market, all this judge has done is slapped down a lazy, plagiarizing author.

Re:Hold your horses!

[morgan_greywolf]

Bingo. Coppying excerpts for purposes of ccommentary and criticism of a work is generally an acceptable practice that is considered fair use. Compiling a bunch of excerpts and publishing them as a lexicon without adding anything original and of value is a clear case of infringement.

Re:Hold your horses!

[Hatta]

You mean selected snippets of the Lexicon were read in order to trick the judge into believing that that was all there was. A clear logical fallacy, but common tactic in cases like this.

Did the defense not have a chance to demonstrate the unique descriptions and commentary above and beyond the information presented in the source material?

Re:Hold your horses!

[AKAImBatman]

You mean selected snippets of the Lexicon were read in order to trick the judge into believing that that was all there was. A clear logical fallacy, but common tactic in cases like this.

Of which the defense simply allowed without showing the substantive quantity of original text following the lifted text? Please. If any lawyer is that incompetent, he deserves to lose. Otherwise, for what purpose does legal defense exist?

Which is funny, considering the HP Lexicon website itself had advertising revenue associated with it.

I will reiterate: It is up to the author to decide how their work is used. Given that there was no charge to the readers of the site, and that web advertising rarely does more than defray operating costs, I can see how she would have given it a nod as an excellent fan reference.

That still conveys ZERO legal right to publish a work of plagiarism for profit. Only Rowling can make that decision. Which (if you read the decision) she attempted to convey in correspondence with the author and publisher. Correspondence that they chose to disregard.

And of course, there's the fact that the research was obviously independent, given that Rowling started attacking them for "getting things wrong":

You appear to think that one cannot plagiarize and yet be guilty of poor research at the same time. Allow me to disabuse you of that notion.

Let's say we have original text that looks like this: "Harry Potter's wand is a 14 inch long, magical instrument that is capable of some very powerful spells indeed! Yet Harry knows that its power is strong and that he should only use it only in dire situations."

Now let's create text that both plagiarizes and adds unsubstantiated claims to the text: "Harry Potter's wand is a 14 inch long, magical piece of wood that is capable of powerful hexes. Harry is a pacifist and thus feels that the power is strong and that he should only use it only in dire situations."

With those very simple changes, we have managed to achieve "getting it wrong" without adding sufficient research to be considered either for fair use or as an original work.

In summary: the judge was dazzled by Rowling's star power and way too much lawyering, and should never be let near a copyright case again because he's proven himself utterly incompetent in the area.

See, that is opinion. The facts presented in the case disagree with your opinion. Until someone demonstrates facts that are contrary to the judge's findings, then I'm afraid you have no leg to stand on.

--

As a personal note, I'd like to add that I have no stake in wanting Rowling to win or lose this case. I have been avoiding the Harry Potter series since its inception and am entirely turned off by its premise. My only interest in this situation is the matter of law and justice. The decision, while an obviously difficult one for the judge, appears to be correct according to everything I have seen about the case to date. Until someone proves otherwise, NewYorkCountryLawyer's post is reactionary and defamatory.

Thanks, NewYorkCountryLawyer!

[crenshawsgc]

But I noticed you accidently wrote at least one sentence that doesn't totally drip with contempt for this ruling. Please don't let this happen again - you know we /.ers don't know what opinions to have unless you spell it out for us.

Ok, let's look at this clearly

[arikol]

As stated above, copyright law has nothing to do with whether someone is successful. The fact is that Rowling had given them permission to have their verbatim copied lexicon as long as it was only free on the web. As soon as they tried to change it into a published work the whole thing changed. She made them absolutely clear from the beginning that no permission was extended to copying her work directly and selling it. So, this is one of very few of these cases where I would side with the super rich, mostly because that's fair in this case but also because it's the actual creator of the work who owns the copyright. This is what copyright is for, protect the CREATOR of stuff from freeloaders so that original creators have an incentive to keep on creating. It is usually abused by corporations who have half enslaved a bunch of creators (music business), but in this case the rights reside with the author. And as the judge states, works like this lexicon are usually protected, except it just copies too much directly, therefore it is not protected. Fair cop

Re:Poor Harry...

[sloomis]

For not having read it you sure seem to know an awful lot about it and the authors intentions