“Harry Potter and the Chamber of Copyright Law”

www.inkthinkerblog.com — This was a great article with a great title. Here’s an excerpt:

Presiding over a packed courtroom this morning, it was as if Judge Robert Patterson had never been asked to cross reference entries for “Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor” before.

Such is the nature of the evidence in a copyright case involving the Harry Potter books. But the whimsy of the situation seemed lost on the gruff judge, who has served on the federal bench in lower Manhattan since 1988, as he fumbled through some of the hundreds of exhibits in search of definitions for ogre, Voldemort, Remus Lupin, Occamy, and the especially confusing Dagbert Pips. (Listed under “P,” it turns out.)

Today was the start of the trial of Warner Brothers’ and J.K. Rowling’s copyright infringement lawsuit against RDR Books, which seeks to enjoin publication of a book version of a popular Harry Potter Lexicon Website offering an A-Z guide to the content of the wildly popular children’s books. Keep Reading >>>

Want more on copyright? Read my post Plagiarism vs. Copyright Infringement: Do You Know the Difference?

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  • Lori Apr 17, 2008 Link

    Did RDR infringe? If the author is to be believed, yes. He said he voiced his concerns to them about it.

    It would depend on so many factors, primary being what is considered copyrighted under the law. Would any of us feel robbed if our works were compiled in someone else’s book? My answer is yes, we would. Does the law see it the same way? I hope so. Did John Lucas get any cut in all that Star Wars stuff (or still)? You can bet he did/does. So should Rowling, in my opinion. This was her creation, her characters, her plots, etc. In my view, she should be the one writing this. At the very least she should have been consulted for permission and editorial oversight.