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."

well that's funny

the first thing I see on the main page is a quote from JKR:
"This is such a great site...my natural home." - JK Rowling
I assume this is a lawyer thing

Re:well that's funny

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:well that's funny

It was her choice to stop writing Harry Potter books and she had planned this for a decade so it has nothing to do with running out of ideas.

A lot of people seem to feel the situation is different because she made a billion or so off the Potter series. Why legally has her situation changed since she was an out of work single mother handwriting a novel? She worked for more than a decade creating the characters so why shouldn't she have the right to control her work? If she allows people to freely expand on her work then she looses control and it becomes something she never intended. It happened with Robert E Howard's work after his death. Many other authors added to his mythologies but none of them equaled the original and most were just trying to make a buck off something popular. Nothing is stopping any of these people from creating original works but they know it's easier to get noticed if you lift from something popular. This is more about taking the easy road to success than creating something. She didn't take the easy road so why should others be allowed to ride her coat tails? Rowlings got lucky with the success of the series but I'm thrilled for her. She's not part of the evil empire she's a little person that made good and crossed over. She should be an axample to everyone not some one to villify when she tries to protect her creation.

Re:well that's funny

Did the publishers of those books make a deal with the publishers of the Harry Potter books? Unless we're talking about those "fanfic" Chinese HP books, I'll bet they did.

And there's the crux of the matter. If the publishers/creators/whatever of this lexicon had sat down and hammered out a deal with the HP publishers, there wouldn't be a court case. But it looks like they're trying to do an end run around those publishers, possibly in order to keep all the potential cash for themselves.

Which is damned foolish, considering the amount of money they're going to have spend on lawyers.

IANAL, but I am in Law School

More importantly, I just wrapped up a section Copyright Law.

This is clearly a derivative work. The subject painting this as containing "factual information" is wrong. Nothing about the Harry Potter "world" is factual. None of its characters exist, none of its events really happened. There was a Seinfeld episodes guide a while back that makes the applicable principles quite clear. The court rejected the argument that the guide was just "factual information" about the series--plot points are not facts.

The simple truth is, copyright owners have an exclusive right to derivative works. That means, yes, fan fiction is likely infringing. In fact, there's a good case to be made under the current law that a lot of stuff most people consider "fair use" is in fact infringing. However, as a practical matter, if you aren't seeking a profit or seriously displacing an author's market through your infrigement, you're safe. (The recent shift to suing infringers a la the RIAA does go against this conventional wisdom, but it doesn't go against the black-letter law.)

Rowling supported this site until they tried to turn a profit off their minimal contribution in reassembling work. Will they have to spend money on lawyers? You bet. But they can potentially make a lot more than that selling a lexicon of their own, should they so choose and should nothing similar already be available.

None of the foregoing is to express a personal position on the matter. I think IP laws are largely broken, especially with regard to Fair Use--which needs very badly to be updated to reflect how the information age has broken copyright. But this is not a close case, not even a little bit; this is, under the present copyright regime in the U.S.A., a clear-cut case of infringement. Best case scenario, the lexicon people can cut a deal with Rowling that gives them a license. But they would have to be humble enough to basically let her dictate the terms.

Follow the Money

Well, one major difference is that a doctoral student is unlikely to be turning a profit. Another is that at least some of e.e. cummings' stuff is in the public domain.

That said, "book reviews" are sort of the paradigmatic example of fair use. Works intended for "criticism or commentary" invoke a great deal of protection. A lot of fair uses take some (or a lot!) of the copyrighted material. But there are several factors to consider, and the strongest factor tends to be whether the infringer is displacing a potential market for the original work, or derivative market for that work. This is distinguishable from disparaging the market for that work. So for instance, a book review can be written, for the profit of a magazine, and damage sales of the original work (say it's a bad review)--but it is not replacing any market or potential market for the original work. You could say that it's impact is "non-competetive."

This lexicon, on the other hand, is not criticism, and it's barely commentary. Author-licensed derivative works would be in direct competition with this unauthorized derivative work, which would be profiting more from J.K.'s success than on its own merits.

I'd like to see Fair Use strengthened, but what I'd like is not the same as what the law says. Of course, I am not a lawyer, and none of my posts are legal advice.

Re:well that's funny

...which is also tax deductible.

Re:well that's funny

If her lawyers are working for free I will eat my hat.

In my very limited opinion it is a grey area as to whether this is infringement or not. According to this post [slashdot.org] 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.

If she is so concerned about getting money to her charity then why not make "the official" version of the book and donate the proceeds to charity, then instead of pushing the boundaries of fair use with a potentially long and expensive trial donate the money she would have spent on a trial to her charity as well?

That way at least the pile of money that would have been swallowed up by lawyers fees goes to charity. So what if Lexicon makes some money off it as well? did they not put some time and effort into this? With a trial instead of Lexicon making some money it is the lawyers on both sides that make the money that charity will never see.

This comes across less like forcing the profits of the book to go to charity and more like being bitter about someone else getting a (tiny) slice of money out of the H.P. empire.

Re: suing for charity...

Do some actual charity work yourself, Rowling. rather than farming it out.

Here's a link [comicrelief.com] where JK wrote two books specifically for charity.

Consider this a learning experience.

The ultimate lawyer-keep-away strategy?

... 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."

This will probably keep them busy for a while!

Wow

the lexicon contains mostly factual information

And all this time I thought it was a work of fiction. You mean magic is real!?!?

The article claims this happens more often

Other popular universes might be Star Wars, Star Trek, the Discworld etc etc. How many of these have books published that are NOT sanctioned by the original copyright holder?

All those Star Trek tech manuals, or star wars art books, or the discworld science books are ALL published with the blessing of Paramount, Lucasfilm and Terry Pratchet. (The ones I got at least)

So are there any books out there that do something similar that were NOT officially sanctioned. I am not talking about parodies like Star Wrecked, these fall under different laws.

Movies spawn novells, these also seem to be often written with the blessing of the studio.

So where is the evidence that this kinda of thing is common practice?

This site is NOT a synopsis or a review or even a discussion site. It is clearly a product designed to work of the original content by extending it. Selling it for money makes it clear they are profitting of someone elses work.

While some one slashdot favor a more lenient copyright system, I think even the most rabid filesharer usually is against people who pirate for profit.

There is a real issue here, who owns the rights to for instance a 3D model of an x-wing. Worse, who owns the rights to a picture of a light-saber. Does it become a Star Wars image because someone hold a sword of light OR does it have to have Jedi written all over it before it becomes a Star Wars image.

But as intresting a discussion as that is, it doesn't apply here. If you browse the site you can clearly see that this is a 100% ripoff of the original work that would have no value on its own. It doesn't fall under the rules for a biography, it is not parody. Fair use is about using a limited amount of someone elses work in your own work.

So how much of this site is their own work and how much that of the original author? I don't think it is a simple measurement, if I produce a detailed layout of the Enterprise, then the resulting blueprint may well be 99% my own work, but that 1% that makes it the enterprise also puts it firmly in the hands of Paramount. Without that 1% it wouldjust be a blueprint, it is their original work that makes it 'worth' something.

Look at it that way, would this site be worth anything without the original work. No, I don't think so.

So I think in this case the copyright/trademark? holder is correct. They tolerated the site because it wasn't commericial, but printing it is clearly designed to earn money. Sorry, but if you want to profit of someone elses original work to such a degree, you got to get their permission first.

Re:The article claims this happens more often

Let's be clear and simple on this point:

Copyright is about the right to copy something. There are rules about fair use and how much copying versus original content is allowed. In this case, it would seem NO amount of copyrighted material was extracted and used, but rather statistics and facts about the series of works are being written.

And the question of "who owns the facts" has been up in the air for a while. Let's look at sports statistics and facts. The various parties in control of profiting from baseball, for example, have started lawsuits against publication of histories, stats, facts and figures related to baseball. "Who owns the facts" is a big deal.

Initially, I was thinking "not copyright -- it can't apply! they must be talking about trademark or some other intellectual property." This is not the case either. This is a [potentially] useful collection of information about the series.

And to pick another slashdot favorite parallel reference: The Church of Scientology often threatens and sues for copyright infringement for very similar activities. Often listing facts, histories and statistics about the CoS results in "copyright" related legal activity where the CoS is the plaintiff.

Who owns the facts?! How far can this "fact owning" notion go? Can people get sued by paramount for the creation and listing of the number of times that Spock says the word "Logic" or "Logical" for the purposes of a drinking game?

This is an important issue and it should really be put to the test and laid out clearly in precedent or law for it to be clear to everyone. "WHO OWNS THE FACTS?"

"imaginary property"

I think we should use the phrase imaginary property much more often.

It's probably not about the money

If you look at Rowling's history in matters of licensing, you'll tend to find that if she's anything she's a control freak rather than greedy. The contract with WB for the films gives her a near unprecidented level of control over the films, and she personally reviews many of the merchandising proposals.

Her concerns tend to be around keeping Harry "pure" - that is retaining control over how everything around it is presented, rather than wringing every last penny out of it.

In this instance it will be about wanting a single authorative lexicon, rather than multiple competing ones, some of which will not fit her vision of things, meet the quality standards she wants or whatever.

I'm not saying that this is right/legal/good, just that claims of greed show little understanding about the individual they are being made against and are probably wrong.

Ego

All discussion here about how much right an author/imaginer has to "protect" their property, I suspect a lot of this is ego. Ms. Rowling is probably very protective of her work because she thinks she's the greatest writer since Charles Dickens.

See following quote: "In February 2007 Rowling issued a statement on her website about finishing the final book, in which she compared her mixed feelings of "mourning" and "incredible sense of achievement" to those expressed by Charles Dickens in the preface of the 1850 edition of David Copperfield, "a two-years' imaginative task." "To which," she added, "I can only sigh, try seventeen years, Charles..."" [usatoday.com]

I mean, wow. That's like me reading John Carmack's .plan and saying, "Oh John, if only you had to work on my XML-driven timesheet application..."

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

Seriously, who does this woman think she is? All she did was all the hard work in creating something. Who is she to profit from it?

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

Obviously you did not see the sarcasm in jay's post

I support the idea of having a lexicon/wiki/whatever. But going out and trying to sell the information that is inside the books is taking it too far.

If you wrote a book, would you want someone taking all the facts out of your book and publishing it for their own profit? This isn't fair use here. If these people wanted to make the sparknotes of Harry Potter, helping the reader understand the books, that is fine. The writer of the notes isn't taking away any money from the author and is adding their own content. This is literally taking every fact out of all 7 books and publishing them for a profit, and not sharing that money with the author.

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

She's a billionaire who has profited from it. It's not like she is in the gutter eating scraps of food.

Let me rephrase the GP's post:

Seriously, who does this woman think she is? All she did was all the hard work in creating something. Who is she to profit more than you say she should from it?

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

She's a billionaire who has profited from it. It's not like she is in the gutter eating scraps of food.

Well, technically she is, but British cuisine has always been rather peculiar.

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

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.

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:writers, journalists, harry potter fans

There's a reason:

A journalist has a publisher standing behind them who can afford to buy lawyers.
A professor has a university with a law faculty standing behind them which makes lawyers.
A Harry Potter junkie has their significant other standing behind them wondering why on earth they spend their time writing all that stuff.

You!!

Fail!!

Like most present, you have never brought both subject and comment together... :P

Re:she's right

It's about intellectual property, as long as this concept, however wrong it is, will be defendable, I'll encourage Janet to sue.

Interesting point. If these laws exist then it would make sense that people would exploit them. These lawsuits expose the laws (and the people who use them) for what they are. Hopefully this will encourage copyright reform in the manner that patent abuse has brought about (an attempt) at patent reform in the US.