In a potential conclusion to an unpleasant lawsuit involving the Harry Potter universe, CNN is reporting that US District Judge Robert P. Patterson in New York City yesterday issued a permanent injunction against Steven Vander Ark, enjoining him from publishing the Harry Potter Lexicon, saying such publication would cause irrerparable harm to Potter author J.K. Rowling as a writer. Patterson also awarded Rowling and Warner Bros. Entertainment $6,750 in statutory damages.
The plaintiffs brought suit against RDR Books last year to stop the pubblication, which was to be a collection of material from Vander Ark’s Harry Potter Lexicon web site. The site itself (now unavailable) had been embraced by Rowling as a fan site, but the rift came about when Vander Ark sought to profit from it. The publisher argued that they recognized the copyright infringement inherent in the book, but that it was a fair use allowable by laws for reference books. Patterson ruled against the book, saying it “appropriates too much of Rowling’s creative work for its purposes as a reference guide.”
Following the ruling, Rowling issued a statement: “I took no pleasure at all in bringing legal action and am delighted that this issue has been resolved favourably. I went to court to uphold the right of authors everywhere to protect their own original work. The court has upheld that right.
“The proposed book took an enormous amount of my work and added virtually no original commentary of its own. Now the court has ordered that it must not be published.
“Many books have been published which offer original insights into the world of Harry Potter. The Lexicon is just not one of them.”
[Edited to add these links: for those who were out of the loop on the earlier stages of the suit, Publishers Weekly has more information here and here. Also, the Wall Street Journal has posted the entire decision as a 68-page pdf file at this link.]
This sounds like a bad decision by the court. Once again the court system favors the rich and powerful over the little guy. This is also bad for freedom of speech. Does this mean every time you make a reference to a character created by someone else you risk being sued? This is sad.
This was also a bad decision on J.K. Rowling part. Books like these would only enhance the Potter brand not take away from it.
Oh dear, I’m very sorry to hear the ruling. The judge seems to have based a lot of his decision on the emotional damage the publication of the book would do to Rowling (i.e. to her ego) which is truly unacceptable. As an academic, reference books generally quote liberally from published sources, and the judge has ignored this in his decision. That is certainly not a good thing. If there is a logical progression from this decision, then it may come that authors or publishers use this ruling as a precedent to bring cases against critics where they do not approve of the commentary, but allow “approved” commentaries to cite liberally from published works.
This will have done Rowling’s reputation no good. I will never purchase anything she has written, nor recommend it to anyone else. If RDR can go to another court, then I wish them the very best of luck.
I think it was a fair decision by the court…it would be hard to hold that so very much of an original work could be used in a for-profit book and still protect the rights of authors.
But I think it was a poor decision by Rowling. She should have either let it slide or asked to be a co-copyright holder. The man was a fan, and the site was absolutely excellent. I am so sorry to hear that it is no longer available.
it may come that authors or publishers use this ruling as a precedent to bring cases against critics where they do not approve of the commentary, but allow “approved” commentaries to cite liberally from published works.
I don’t see this as a worrisome possibility, because the blatantly uneven application of the law would tend to kick those suits out of court. If a copyright infringer can show that the copyright holder has known about other infringements and allowed them to remain unmolested, that would work against the copyright holder.
Jenn: you’re worrying unnecessarily. I haven’t read the full (68 page!) decision but it sounds as though the judge was not saying that you may not refer to other authors’ characters — he said that the HP LEXICON used too much of Rowling’s material without adding enough that was new. See the following excerpt from the Publishers Lunch story:
In the full opinion, Patterson walks a fine line through the nuanced arguments made in the case. He acknowledges that “reference works that share the Lexicon’s purpose of aiding readers of literature generally should be encouraged rather than stifled” and speaks of “striking the balance between the property rights of original authors and the freedom of expression of secondary authors… but to borrow from Rowling’s overstated views, they should not be permitted to ‘plunder’ the works of original authors.”
So the judge was not denying you the right to create a critical or interpretive work about someone else’s book; he was saying that the original material (yours) must be sufficiently greater than the quoted material — a standard he decided the LEXICON did not meet. This is obviously a fuzzy area, but the relevant argument is factual — did the book contain enough original material, or did it not?
And the judgment is hardly an uncritical endorsement of Rowling’s position; Patterson refers to her “overstated” views.
Unfortunately, when rulings are used as precedents, it is often only the outcome to which attention is paid, and this falls securely against the rights of academics or others who service the need for reference works. Too much credence was given to the distress that the publication of the work would have allegedly brought to Rowling, which coloured the real issues at hand.
I dont have the figures, but Ansible did give coverage of aspects of the case prior to the decision, and the amended usage of Rowling’s own words (after her initial objection) was very slight indeed (particularly in comparison to the original Lexicon site – which she herself made use of!).
It is strange that Rowling would allow the site to exist, where many more visitors must have read the material than in any book version published by a relatively small publisher like RDR, but when a most likely modest amount of money was to be made by RDR (well deserved due to the work of creating and hosting the original Lexicon site – truly invaluable marketing for the Harry Potter series) this could not be tolerated. What does this imply: greed, the penchant for someone who has more than they could ever need, to want even more.
She must realise that there is a reason copyright to works is not eternal, and that some time after she dies, the works will be in the public domain, and that this and other episodes will inevitably colour how the material is viewed (and no doubt in a negative light). Another triumph of corporate and individual greed and ignorance over common sense.
Copyright to individuals and estates and corporations (much like patents) is finite in time. The reason is that works of literature (like patents on drugs and inventions) are ultimately seen as belonging to the common heritage of humanity. Mrs Rowling would do well to remember that she cannot take her fortune with her to her grave, and that (as any historian or literary critic will tell you) works are read in context. The context of who the writer was, what they stood for, and, when at the height of their power, how they treated the little guy.