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the potter copyright case

geni

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geni
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Oct 14, 2003
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Author JK Rowling has won her legal battle in a New York court to get an unofficial Harry Potter encyclopaedia banned from publication.

Judge Robert Patterson said in a ruling Ms Rowling, 43, had proven Steven Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon would cause her irreparable harm as a writer.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7605142.stm

Unfortunate but probably inevitable.
 
Inevitable in what sense? All the legal / copyright blogs seemed to think the publisher of the encyclopaedia had a fair use case.
 
Seems to be a pretty straightforward case that was determined on the amount of Rowling's original work it contained.

And she did come across as rather a crybaby:

She had been planning to write her own definitive encyclopaedia, the proceeds of which she had intended to donate to charity.

However, she told the court in April she is not sure if she has "the will or the heart" to do it after all.
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Never mind I'm sure you'll have the "will or heart" to licence it out for a few million!
 
Probably inevitable in the fact that she has loadsamoney to fight the case.

BBC Link said:
'Not about money'

In April, Ms Rowling gave evidence in court and said the encyclopaedia amounted to "wholesale theft".

The author has always denied the case was about money. (Yeah right)

She had been planning to write her own definitive encyclopaedia, the proceeds of which she had intended to donate to charity. (Awww, for charity)

However, she told the court in April she is not sure if she has "the will or the heart" to do it after all. (Awww, not for charity.)

At the time RDR Books argued that it is little different than any other novel reference guide and should be allowed to go to press without interference.
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Any JK Rowling fans willing to defend her.
 
As anyone who has read my various comments regarding Harry Potter and the Bottomless Well of Money over the years will know I am not a fan of her work. However I am a fan of authors' copyright being protected (to a certain degree) and if the majority of this encyclopaedia consisted of her work (that's how I read the reports of the judgments) then it seems a fair result.
 
Here's Neil Gaiman's take on the case (written back in April):

...
In the Time-Warner-Rowling-Vander Ark case it's not about "is he making money from her ideas?" or "will this stop fan websites?" or any of that stuff that people are talking about on line. It doesn't matter from a legal perspective that Ms Rowling was doing or planning her own encyclopedia, or that the money is going to charity, or any of that stuff, although I'm sure Ms Rowling feels it does (because I would, if I were her).

As far as I can see it's only about a couple of really grey areas of copyright law -- I suspect, and I am SO not a lawyer, that it will come down to whether or not what Mr Vander Ark had done to Ms Rowling's work in his Lexicon was sufficiently "transformative" as to render it a new work.

There's an online annotation of Sandman. If the people who did it -- or if someone else -- decided to publish it, I couldn't stop them even if I didn't want it to come out, even if Les Klinger had finally persuaded me to get DC Comics to let him do an official Annotated Sandman. (Someone asked when Les's Annotated Dracula comes out -- it'll be in October 2008.) That's because it's obviously a transformative work -- it's based on my work, but it springs off from it.

If someone did a website in which everything in Sandman is listed in alphabetical order, as a concordance or lexicon... whether or not I was going to do one doesn't matter. Whether or not someone else is making money off my work and words and ideas doesn't matter. Whether it's a good lexicon or a bad lexicon doesn't matter. Whether it quotes me extensively may or may not matter (how extensively I'm quoted is a matter of Fair Use, but paraphrase me and you are home and dry on that count). What matters is whether it sufficiently transforms what I've done into something else by taking those entries and putting them into alphabetical order. How much original work is being done? The King James Bible is in the public domain. If you made a lexicon or concordance of the King James Bible, listing every person and place mentioned in there, something that would take you a lot of time -- you could copyright it. If someone copied it -- simply took your King James Bible Lexicon book and put their name on it -- could you sue them? Should you?
...
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http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/04/few-final-copyright-thoughts-before-we.html
 
Professor Yaffle said:
Here's Neil Gaiman's take on the case (written back in April):
l
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That's exactly what I meant about the blog chatter - there seemed to be a great deal of opinion that the Vander Encyclopaedia was a transformative reference work. There was also some worries that this might set a dangerous precedent with regards to things like Cliff Notes.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Given that Rowling herself had admitted to having referred to the online version of this book to check chronologies and continuities, it would have been much better (morally and practically) for her simply to have bought or licesensed the content from Vander. I can never understand how suing some of your most dedicated fans makes sound business sense.
 
volatile said:
That's exactly what I meant about the blog chatter - there seemed to be a great deal of opinion that the Vander Encyclopaedia was a transformative reference work. There was also some worries that this might set a dangerous precedent with regards to things like Cliff Notes.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.
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The problem was that first trandformative is only one of the things taken into consideration for fair use and second the ruleing going the other way would have made a complete mess of an author's right to control derivatice works.

Given that Rowling herself had admitted to having referred to the online version of this book to check chronologies and continuities, it would have been much better (morally and practically) for her simply to have bought or licesensed the content from Vander. I can never understand how suing some of your most dedicated fans makes sound business sense.
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Because authored by JK Rowling means that it would likely have higher sales.
 
geni said:
]Because authored by JK Rowling means that it would likely have higher sales.
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I think "approved by JK Rowling", with a foreword by her and with her edits, would have done just fine. No need to sue people who love your work.
 
volatile said:
Inevitable in what sense? All the legal / copyright blogs seemed to think the publisher of the encyclopaedia had a fair use case.
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I was going by the judge's intial near begging for them the settle it out of court.
 
volatile said:
I think "approved by JK Rowling", with a foreword by her and with her edits, would have done just fine. No need to sue people who love your work.
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The damages awarded are minimal. And while she may have wanted to publish a harry potter encyclopedia the lexicon wasn't the one wshe wanted to publish.
 
I'm going to suggest that what she did was very prudent, legally speaking. Potter is her property and she must actively protect it in order to keep her full rights to it. To draw an analogy, the lexicon is a form of squatting, or to a lesser extent, trespassing on her property. If she doesn't at least try to evict, she sets a precedent by her inaction. This opens the door to further transgressions by others.

Another somewhat related example is the book The Wind Done Gone' by Alice Randall wherein the author tells the same story as Gone With the Wind from the perspective of the slaves.

Interestingly, the controversy prompted me to seek out a copy of the manuscript. Funny how that happens, huh? I doubt I'll be seeking out the Potter Lexicon however.
 
Rob Lister said:
I'm going to suggest that what she did was very prudent, legally speaking. Potter is her property and she must actively protect it in order to keep her full rights to it. To draw an analogy, the lexicon is a form of squatting, or to a lesser extent, trespassing on her property. If she doesn't at least try to evict, she sets a precedent by her inaction. This opens the door to further transgressions by others.
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No that's trademark copyright doesn't work like that.
 
volatile said:
That's exactly what I meant about the blog chatter - there seemed to be a great deal of opinion that the Vander Encyclopaedia was a transformative reference work. There was also some worries that this might set a dangerous precedent with regards to things like Cliff Notes.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Given that Rowling herself had admitted to having referred to the online version of this book to check chronologies and continuities, it would have been much better (morally and practically) for her simply to have bought or licesensed the content from Vander. I can never understand how suing some of your most dedicated fans makes sound business sense.
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Business sense is not the only issue, remember that this still has an element of art to it, and seeing someone else mess around with your art messes with some peoples heads. So this likely impacts her financialy in no way at all, but if it offends her sensibilities about what is being done to her world and characters, it makes a lot of sense to see people fight it.
 
None of us have read the lexicon, so I don't really see how we can judge whether the judgement is fair or not. However, as reported, I support it.
 
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