J.K. Rowling hit with plagarizing lawsuit for "Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire."

[beautywickedlover]

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

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 10/14/10 at 2:17pm

Hasn't she been sued before for the stealing from another book? Or is this the same thing?

[Reginald Tresilian]

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.

[orangeskittles]

Posted: 10/14/10 at 3:36pm

The 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.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 10/14/10 at 3:40pm

According the "The Guardian," the accusations were first made in 2004.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/14/10 at 3:44pm

The 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.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/14/10 at 4:05pm

Famous authors are frequently hit with plagiarism lawsuits.

Some are legitimate; many are frivolous; few prevail.

[orangeskittles]

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.

Updated On: 10/15/10 at 04:41 PM

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 10/14/10 at 4:54pm

Eva 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]

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?

[Reginald Tresilian]

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.

[BellatrixxLestrangee]

Posted: 10/14/10 at 5:50pm

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. It's absurd.

[Plum]

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]

Posted: 10/15/10 at 10:25am

Also, Cinderella and other fables aren't copyrighted.

[beautywickedlover]

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/