Rowling Wins Lawsuit Against Potter Lexicon
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For seven years, a Harry Potter fanatic worked on a guidebook to J. K. Rowling’s best-selling series, but in the end, a federal judge ruled on Monday, his book was too close to the work he admired.
“Plaintiffs have shown that the lexicon copies a sufficient quantity of the Harry Potter series to support a finding of substantial similarity between the Lexicon and Rowling’s novels,” Judge Robert P. Patterson Jr. of Federal District Court in Manhattan wrote in his 68-page ruling blocking publication of a Harry Potter Lexicon written by Steven Jan Vander Ark.
The decision, which came nearly five months after a four-day trial, was a victory for Ms. Rowling and Warner Brothers Entertainment, the company that produces the Harry Potter movies. They had sued to block a Michigan-based publisher from producing the lexicon. Judge Patterson awarded the plaintiffs $6,750 in damages.
“I took no pleasure at all in bringing legal action and am delighted that this issue has been resolved favorably,” Ms. Rowling said in a statement. “I went to court to uphold the right of authors everywhere to protect their own original work. The proposed book took an enormous amount of my work and added virtually no original commentary of its own.”