Rowling Sues Harry Potter Lexicon

Snape kills Trinity with Rosebud writes "Apparently famous authors don't like it if you try to make a buck using their imaginary property because J.K. Rowling is suing the publishers of the Harry Potter Lexicon for infringement. This should prove an interesting test case for fair use given that the lexicon contains mostly factual information about the series, not copies of the books' text. Of course, both sides seem a bit touchy about imaginary property rights, with Rowling's lawyers being miffed after being told to print it themselves when they asked for a paper copy of the lexicon's website, and the lexicon website itself using one of those insipid right click disabling scripts."

Re:well that's funny

[burne]

If you read on and visit Rowling's site you will notice something. The story is quite different from what the grandfather-post suggests. Rowling has been helping the lexicon so for. But now the makers of the lexicon intend to make money by publishing a book, and that is where Rowling has to draw the line. She's happy helping fans, but selling books based on her work is a bridge to far.

I take no pleasure in the fact that publication has been prevented for the present. On the contrary, I feel massively disappointed that this matter had to come to court at all. Despite repeated requests, the publishers have refused to even countenance making any changes to the book to ensure that it does not infringe my rights. (source [jkrowling.com]

Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture.

[Scudsucker]

That only applies to trademarks, not copyrights or patents.

Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture.

[1u3hr]

You are legally required to aggressively defend your IPR, otherwise you lose it. Hate the game, not the playa.

No, you are not. This is a common misconception. It applies, if at all, only to trademarks ("Kleenex". "Xerox"), not copyright (this case).

Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture.

[tmk]

You are legally required to aggressively defend your IPR, otherwise you lose it. Hate the game, not the playa.

That is a common error. You don't loose rights when you refuse to sue people. A few weeks ago I read a story about someone who did a parody of a website, he used logos and design which are clearly copyrighted. And what happened? The company did not sue the author, they gave him a license for his parody. They did not lose any intellectual property, the did not pay any lawyer or court and they had free publicity. The parody was clearly no competition for them.

Re:well that's funny

[moggie_xev]

I just wanted to point out that she is writing an encyclopedia the profits from the sale will go to her charity, I believe she has also said if she wins the case the profits from the court case will also go to her charity.

Stallman to the rescue...

[Orthuberra]

No Slashdot thread is complete without RMS's opinion [stallman.org] on the matter.

Not Surprised

[libcrypto]

J. K. Rowling's lawyers seems to be on a suing spree.. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=487334&in_page_id=1811 [dailymail.co.uk] This one they lost.

She has failed in legal action before

[Chrisq]

She failed previously to sue for "generic" use of characters. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7040191.stm [bbc.co.uk] and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7041863.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture.

[arose]

But going out and trying to sell the information that is inside the books is taking it too far.

No it's not, factual information isn't and shouldn't be protected.

Re:well that's funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in the UK; well not in the way you americans mean when you say it's tax deductible. I believe in the US you can write the entire donation off against tax; in the UK the Charity reclaims (& keeps) the 22% Tax .. if you are liable at 40% rate, you get to reclaim the difference (i.e. 18%) via your end of year Personal Assessment Tax Return.

Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture.

[ericlondaits]

No, "fair use" as a protection is based on the length of the extracts use from the original, and in how much monetary value it takes from it.

Re:IANAL, but I am in Law School

[Pope]

Where are you in law school? The US and UK have different laws concerning copyrights, you know.

The entire purpose of copyright

[lemur337]

is this:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. It seems likely that U.K. copyright and patent laws were formulated with similar intent. So Rowling is done producing "useful Arts" based on her characters. Let some else bring us some more "useful Arts" we can enjoy.

That's the whole point of copyright, and patents for that matter. This point got lost somewhere along the road to unrestricted corporatism.

Re:well that's funny

[Khelder]

In my very limited opinion it is a grey area as to whether this is infringement or not. According to this post Rowling was planning a similar book the profits of which would go to charity, so she asked Lexicon to at least do the same which they wouldn't do.

Copyright gives authors certain rights with respect to works they've already created, not ones they're just thinking about or may create in the future. If she was planning to do a similar book, that explains her motivation, but has no bearing on whether the Lexicon infringes her copyright on existing Harry Potter books.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:IANAL, but I am in Law School

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are confusing "derivative" work with "transformative" work. Transformative is taking the underlying ideas or concepts, which are NOT copyrightable, and creating something different from the original work that does not impact the original market. As you may recall, it is the EXPRESSION of an idea that is only protected. A derivative is similar to the original work. I don't believe that is the issue here. The book is not a "sequel" or provide a story line that draws on the original book. The case you cite is Castle Rock Entertainment v. Carol Publishing Group. There the court held that a trivia book was within the potential licensing market for "Seinfeld", mainly because it relied on the expression of ideas found in the series. However, under SunTrust Bank v. Houghton Miffin, the Court held that "The Wind Done Gone" was a transformative work, had no impact on the potential market for "Gone With The Wind". The question in this instance is whether the work is truly transformative. That I cannot speak to as I have not seen the material (for that matter, I haven't read any of the books or seen any of the movies). I suspect that her participation in the development, when she believed it was a "work of love", may bar her from claiming it will have a negative impact on her potential market.

Re:she's right

[LrdDimwit]

No. This is a copyright infringement suit, not a trademark case. Trademark law does work the way you describe -- if you do not defend a trademark, you can lose all protection to it. Trademarks are supposed to identify that the trademarked item comes from a particular source; if world+dog can use it without interference, this vanishes and so does the protection. There are number of high-profile cases of this happening to existing trademarks (see below), so most big corporations with very valuable brand names are quite paranoid about allowing them to be diluted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirin#Trademark_issues [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark [wikipedia.org]

No comparable mechanism exists for copyright. Copyright holders are free to prosecute whoever they want, and ignore other infringers. There are a couple of defenses (if you tell someone they can do something, for instance, you can't sue them anymore) but generally, a copyright holder is perfectly free to leave websites alone and go after those same people for selling deadtree versions of the exact same content. It so happens in this case they have a weak case, but for other reasons (fair use reasons).

Were it done any other way, one of the consequences would be that all fanfiction would have to be cracked down on (otherwise the owners would lose all copyrights). While a lot of people like to make cracks about how bad much fanfiction is, I don't think many would argue it ought to be cracked down on indiscriminately.