JK Rowling Attempting to Block Harry Potter Encyclopaedia
JK Rowling is to appear in a US court in an attempt to prevent RDR Books from publishing an unauthorised encyclopaedia covering the Harry Potter books and movies. She claims that 2,034 of the 2,437 entries violate her intellectual property.
The lawyer for RDR books counters that the lexicon is a new work which is a companion to the Harry Potter series rather than a substitute for it.
Rowling states that making money from her work is against the spirit of Harry Potter. She is planning to write a lexicon with the proceeds to go to charity and says this unauthorised publication will undermine her book and thus hurt the charities.
is a big loser. I hope JKR and WB win this case, cause if they don't, authors will be forced into tightening their copyrights.
If anyone's curious, the book will be a print copy of http://www.hp-lexicon.org, which is online for free and has very little original content. He's just grabbing money, and according to a statement from his publisher, he's doing it for underprivilidged kids who don't have access to the Internet.
Did JK seriously just say that making money from her work is against the spirit of Harry Potter? Well it's good to know that the hundreds of millions she made were all donated to charity in the spirit of Harry Potter!
Copyright laws don't cease to apply just because someone had to put work into ripping someone else off. Why should she have to get over it if it's her intellectual property? Why SHOULD she get over it if this scoops an encyclopedia she, herself, will be doing? A person would be an idiot to take this lying down.
has created all the characters, plots, etc. then yes it is her work. And no matter how much money she makes from it, she is entitled to make more if she wants. I'm sure if any of us created something unique and someone else tried to make a buck off of it, we'd sue them in a heartbeat. I know I would.
"freedom of the press" does not allow others to override your copyright. Also, she HAS given to charity, for instance she wrote those supplemental works and gave all that to charity.
...from all the Star Wars and Star Trek and Tolkien encyclopedias out there? It is certainly unfortunate that it is being released before and will have to compete with one written by Rowling for charity, but that is not a reason to ban it.
I'm not trying to be smart or dismissive on this but as I understand it a lexicon is one of the exceptions in copyright law that specifically permits you to use other peoples work. Other exceptions include social commentary, and satire.
Copyright law is designed to protect the financial security of the inventory, by protecting their implementation of the ideas - it does not and should not enforce a monopoly on those implementations.
The problem arises is this encyclopedia is set specifically in the Harry Potter universe, not as an entry in a broader sense.
That being said, I think JK Rowling has the infamous Intellectual Property on her side.
I hate copyright issues. They should stick with, "If you blatantly copy someone else's work and you claim it as your own" as copyright infringement. But that is my opinion.
between this and other Star Wars, Star Trek publications is that those contain original work. The HP Lexicon is just chunks out of the books with no new content. He's not put any work into it at all, it is not his to publish in the first place.
Rowling has written extensive backstories for many of the characters, major and minor, that don't appear or are only hinted at in her books. From what I understand, much of that material is planned to go into her lexicon. So what she has planned will be new to readers, not just a resume of each character, etc., as he/she appears in the books.
Obviously, a lexicon that doesn't include that material won't be nearly as good a lexicon as she intends to write. I think she just wants to make sure that the lexicon based on her fictional universe is as good as she intends hers to be.
@Ichi "It is time to open source Harry. Give him to the world."
Great Idea but a dream. The JKR empire employs a lot of people. I hope she wins her case as I would like to see a lexicon with just 403 entries in it. JKR is one of the biggest donaters in the country and gets my support.
