Potter in Court

Rowling sues fan over Harry Potter encyclopedia.

Last week, J.K. Rowling went to court in a lawsuit to block the publication of an encyclopedia based on her famous Harry Potter series. The judge in the case has not yet issued a ruling and says he hopes Rowling will settle out of court with RDR Books, the publisher of the encyclopedia.

During the trial, which began April 14, Rowling testified in a New York courtroom that Steven Vander Ark, the author of the Harry Potter Lexicon, was illegally infringing on her copyright.

Vander Ark, an enthusiastic Potter fan and former librarian, runs the popular Harry Potter Lexicon website, located at HP-Lexicon.org. His 400-page encyclopedia, which would retail for $24.95, is a book version of the website and contains information about the people, creatures, places, spells, and objects from the Potter universe, arranged alphabetically.

“It’s been difficult because there has been a lot of criticism and that was never the intention,” Vander Ark testified on April 14. “This has been an important part of my life for the last nine years or so.”

At the center of the debate is the question of whether Vander Ark’s use of Rowling’s material qualifies as fair use. Fair use is a nebulous concept in U.S. law that allows people to reproduce copyrighted works under some circumstances for the purposes of criticism, reporting, education, or research.

Four factors must weighed when determining whether use of a copyrighted work is fair use: the character of the use (including whether it is commercial or nonprofit), the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount of the original work used, and the effect on the market value of the work.
Historically, judges have ruled that fair use gives people the right to parody others’ works, write unauthorized biographies, and photograph celebrities. The question of literary reference guides, which are common for popular fantasy and science fiction series, has never been conclusively settled in court.

Anthony Falzone, the head of the Stanford University Law School Fair Use Project and a lawyer for the Michigan-based RDR Books, argues that the encyclopedia constitutes fair use of Rowling’s material because Vander Ark added his own creativity and analysis. Falzone said that the book is a reference guide whose purpose is “to organize and discuss the complicated and very elaborate world of Harry Potter.”

According to the New York Times, Vander Ark testified that he used secondary sources, such as Bulfinch’s Mythology, A Field Guide to the Little People, and Haunted Britain to research the etymologies of Rowling’s invented words and the various myths and legends that inspired parts of the Potter books.

Rowling took the witness stand on April 14 and 16, calling the encyclopedia “the wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work.”

The famed author calls herself “vehemently anti-censorship” and has said that she supports most derivative works of her books. She has even gone so far as to give the Harry Potter Lexicon site a fan site award.

“This is such as great site that I have been known to sneak into an Internet café while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter (which is embarrassing),” Rowling wrote on her website, JKRowling.com.

Rowling argued in court, however, that Vander Ark’s encyclopedia goes farther than either the website or most reference guides, and that allowing its publication would set a precedent in favor of those who want to rip off others’ work. “I believe the floodgates will open,” she said. “Are we the owners of our own work?”

Rowling has said that she plans to write a Potter encyclopedia and to donate the profits to charity. Her legal team, however, failed to prove conclusively that publication of the Lexicon would hurt sales of either Rowling’s encyclopedia or the original novels. While RDR Books planned an initial print run of 10,000 copies, the first print run for Rowling’s encyclopedia has been estimated at 3 million copies.

U.S. District Judge Robert Patterson Jr. asked Rowling in court whether people would be likely to read the Lexicon for entertainment value.
“Probably not,” Rowling answered, but noted that “I think there are funny things in there, and I wrote them.”

According to Rowling, money is not the reason for the lawsuit. “We all know I’ve made enough money,” she said. “That’s absolutely not why I’m here.”

“A fan’s affectionate enthusiasm should not obscure acts of plagiarism,” Rowling and Warner Brothers, the owner of the copyrights to the Harry Potter films, said in a statement. “The problem remains that the Lexicon takes an enormous amount of Ms. Rowling’s work and adds virtually no original commentary of its own. … Authors have a duty to prevent the exploitation of their works by people who contribute nothing original, creative or interpretive.”

Judge Patterson called the case “a legal close call” on April 16. “I think this case, with imagination, could be settled,” he said in court. Patterson gave both legal teams until May 9 to submit written closing statements.