J.K Rowling usually makes her public appearences at booktores and theatres before thousands of her fans. However, on 14th of April 2008, Ms. Rowling, author of the wildly popular Harry Potter series made an appearance on the witness stand in a Lower Manhattan federal courtroom, testifying against a small publisher looking to bring out an encyclopedia based on her work.
Ms. Rowling has supported much of the fan output, doling out awards to Internet sites and granting interviews to Web masters. But when RDR Books, a small publisher in Muskegon, Michigen, announced it was planning to publish a print version last fall of a popular fan Web site called “The Harry Potter Lexicon” (hp-lexicon.org), Ms. Rowling and Warner Brothers, the movie studio that has adapted her books into films, balked. Their objection is that the book merely repackages Ms. Rowling’s work and, unlike the free fan sites, is intended to make money for its publisher(The New York Times 2008)
In October Ms. Rowling and Warner Brothers sued RDR for copyright infringement, and in November the company suspended publication so that Judge Robert P. Patterson Jr., of the Southern District of New York, could assess the merits of the suit(The New York Times 2008).
J.K Rowling arriving at the Manhattan Court (The New York Times 2008)
Click here for a copy of the law suit.
Jean Hollis Weber provides guidelines to avoid the infringements of copyright and intellectual property. Her website, 'The Technical Editor's Eyrie is complete with everything one should know to avoid ignorantly getting into publishing woes.
References
The New York Times 2008, 'Rowling To Testify In Trial Over Potter Lexicon', viewed at <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/books/14potter.html>, on 10 June 2008.
Weber,J.H 2008, 'Technical Editor's Eyrie', viewed at <http://www.jeanweber.com/newsite/>, on 10 June 2008.
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