J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for "Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire."
beautywickedlover
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/28/07
#1J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for "Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire."
Posted: 10/14/10 at 2:14pm
J.K. Rowling is facing a plagarizing lawsuit. They are saying that when she wrote "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" she copied substianal parts of the 1987 Adrian Jacobs book, "The Adventures of Willy the Wizard — No. 1 Livid Land." What do you think of this?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101014/ap_en_ce/eu_britain_rowling_lawsuit
#2J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.'
Posted: 10/14/10 at 2:17pmHasn't she been sued before for the stealing from another book? Or is this the same thing?
#2J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.'
Posted: 10/14/10 at 2:37pm
There was a different one a few years ago. A woman had written a book in which she says she coined the term "muggles" (which were subhuman creatures, I seem to recall). Also she wrote some booklets featuring a kid with glasses named Larry Potter.
Quite a coincidence, but it was proven in a several hearings that there was no way Rowling could have seen them.
#3J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.'
Posted: 10/14/10 at 3:36pmThe timing of this seems odd. It's been 10 years since Goblet of Fire was published, and 5 years since the movie was released. Why did it take so long to notice similarities? It's not as though the Harry Potter series is underpublicized.
Wanting life but never knowing how
#4J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.'
Posted: 10/14/10 at 3:40pmAccording the "The Guardian," the accusations were first made in 2004.
Phyllis Rogers Stone
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/16/07
#5J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.'
Posted: 10/14/10 at 3:44pmThe author of the book that was allegedly plagiarized is dead, and the book was obscure. I couldn't tell you one thing about any Harry Potter book, so it's possible to avoid the series.
#6J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.'
Posted: 10/14/10 at 4:05pm
Famous authors are frequently hit with plagiarism lawsuits.
Some are legitimate; many are frivolous; few prevail.
#7J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.'
Posted: 10/14/10 at 4:41pm
Oh, I'm sure people out there who pay no attention to Harry Potter and are unaware of specific plot points. I didn't see that the suit was originally filed in 2004, and wondered why it was brought to their attention a decade later.
That said, as in the previous lawsuit, I don't there's much merit in lawsuits over similarities between fantasy books. I loved the genre when I was younger and still do read a few series, but to be quite honest, the plots aren't that vastly different. I read one book about a band of elves, dwarfs, humans on a quest- including traveling an underground mine- to destroy an evil magical [sword] welded by a young, innocent elf, as they're followed by a gnome who is obsessed with possessing it and chased by evil winged black creatures. It was a New York Times best seller. No lawsuits were filed. It just seems like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon because JK Rowling is rich and successful instead of accepting that all fantasy is derivative- including their own.
Wanting life but never knowing how
#8J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.'
Posted: 10/14/10 at 4:54pmEva Ibbotson's work has been compared to Rowling's, with many readers finding similarities between them. But unlike these two, Ibbotson says of Rowling that she'd "like to shake her by the hand. I think we all borrow from each other as writers."
Jon
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/20/04
#9J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.'
Posted: 10/14/10 at 5:38pm
Isn't the Wizard of Oz pretty much a rip-off of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan?
Aren't Phantom of the Opera and Hunchback of Notre Dame and King Kong just versions of the Beauty and the Beast story?
Isn't Pygmalion just Cinderella?
#10J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.'
Posted: 10/14/10 at 5:46pm
Well, Peter Pan was written after The Wizard of Oz, so no.
But at any rate, these lawsuits (and I agree they don't have merit) aren't about generalized aspects of the fantasy genre. They claim specific plot point and nomenclature were copied.
#11J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.'
Posted: 10/14/10 at 5:50pmI've been doing some research on this and apparently they are saying JK Rowling stole things like the idea of wizards traveling on trains and both main characters being required to solve a task as part of a contest which they both do in the bathroom. It's absurd.
Plum
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/4/04
#12J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.'
Posted: 10/14/10 at 11:54pm
I've been doing some research on this and apparently they are saying JK Rowling stole things like the idea of wizards traveling on trains and both main characters being required to solve a task as part of a contest which they both do in the bathroom.
I'm going to guess that since the UK is party to the Berne convention, their copyright infringement standards aren't too different from those of the U.S., in which case the following can be relevant:
You can't copyright ideas - only the expression of those ideas. Which is obviously a really blurry line that attorneys spend entire trials arguing over, but cripes, those are stupid examples. If that's all the plaintiff's got, (s)he's basically just playing the litigation lottery and hoping to get lucky.
The "wizards travelling by train" thing, especially, is just bone stupid. There are only so many ways wizards can travel - magical means like carpets, brooms, etc. or mundane means like cars, ships, and yes, trains. When an idea like "wizards travelling" has only so many ways to be expressed, it's mise en scene - you can't claim a big chunk of it for yourself and take it out of the commons. I'm guessing that the lawsuit has something more detailed and specific than "wizards on trains", or else it really is the work of utter dumbasses.
And all that won't even be a consideration unless the "plagiarized" content reaches the level of expression rather than ideas, which it very well may not. Oy.
Phyllis Rogers Stone
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/16/07
#13J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.'
Posted: 10/15/10 at 10:25amAlso, Cinderella and other fables aren't copyrighted.
beautywickedlover
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/28/07
#14J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for 'Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.'
Posted: 1/7/11 at 10:34am
The suit has been dismissed.
http://news-briefs.ew.com/2011/01/07/harry-potter-plagiarism-suit-dismissed/
Videos


