RDR Books Agrees to Delay Potter Title
By Shannon Maughan -- Publishers Weekly,11/09/2007
On November 8, RDR Books proposed an order to the New York Federal Court agreeing to temporarily withhold publication of its planned title The Harry Potter Lexicon by Steve Vander Ark. Judge Robert Patterson accepted the order to delay publication of the book until he can determine the merits of a lawsuit filed on October 31 by Potter author J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. which claims that the Lexicon violates Rowling’s copyright. RDR Books denies the allegation.
Upon filing the suit, Rowling stressed that the Lexicon would interfere with her own Harry Potter encyclopedia, a work in progress, and would hurt her efforts to give proceeds from the book to children’s charities.
In a statement, RDR Books publisher Roger Rapoport characterized the legal proceedings as a “David and Goliath battle,” noting that Rowling has previously praised Vander Ark’s Web site, on which his book is based. Further, Rapoport urged that Rowling, in the name of “literary freedom and free expression,” drop “her complaint against a book we are confident she would enjoy reading.”
Rowling and Warner Bros. must provide support for their request for a preliminary injunction by January 7; RDR Books’s response must be received by January 22, with a hearing on the preliminary injunction set for February 6.
The Lexicon suit has not been not the only Potter buzz of the week, either. In a likely hoax, an Australian site reported that a new Web site—"harry potter book 8 secret test marketing"—was counting down the days to a project called James Potter and the Hall of Elder's Crossing, rumored to be an eighth Harry Potter novel. Warner Bros., neither confirmed nor denied involvement with the rumored project, but a studio spokesperson offered this comment on the site: "Many fans believe that James Potter and the Hall of Elder's Crossing may be the eighth book of the series—but written by someone other than author J.K. Rowling."
A Scholastic spokesperson said, "This is clearly not an eighth book in the Harry Potter series."
An update: on Friday, in addition to Scholastic, Potter fan site hpana.com was fast out of the gate to spread the—not surprising—news that Rowling's agents and Warner Bros. confirmed that the Web site promoting an eighth book has no official connection to the Harry Potter series. "Jo has not written an eighth book in the series and is not doing so," Rowling's agent Neil Blair told HPANA. "So no James Potter book I'm afraid."
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| Submitted by: | Mike Perry (editor@inklingbooks.com) 11/9/2007 1:06:50 PM PT |
| Location: | Seattle, WA |
| Occupation: | Editor |
RDR Books has made a wise choice. A few years ago, when I fought the Tolkien estate over my Lord of the Rings chronology, the estate''s Manhattan lawyers did me a favor by filing their lawsuit before I published. A helpful ACLU lawyer pointed out that that allowed me to create what the estate''s lawyers would later call a "moving target." It meant that, as the lawsuit progressed, the legal process forced the estate''s lawyers to serve as my legal counsel, pointing out petty weaknesses in my book that might have confused a judge less intelligent than the one in my case. Encouraged by the judge, fixing those weaknesses was a trivial task. At two points in the dispute, the estate''s lawyers presented evidence of "plagarisms," petty similarities between what I''d written and what Tolkien or his son Christopher had written, often in obscure books I''d never seen. A hour''s work with the draft, and that research, which must have cost them many hours and thousands of dollars was, in legal terms "moot," and could be dismissed with a single sentence in my reply. Oh how I loved that! RDR Books now has to get the lawsuit moved from the Second Circuit, which is hostile to small publishers and authors to any other circuit, preferably one in their home state of Michigan. In a lamentably foolish set of rulings in 1998, the Second Circuit essentially banned reader''s guides to popular fiction, despite the fact that such works have long been protected by fair use as a reader- friendly form of literary commentary. In any other circuit, a work like theirs would almost certainly be protected. In my case, the judge dismissed the Tolkien lawsuit "with prejudice," demonstrating that it''s miles within the law in the Ninth Circuit. In today''s New York no one knows. That''s why I tell fellow authors, editors, and publishers (I''m all three), never have anything that can be construed as a legal presence in New York state. No rented space in a warehouse, no sales representatives, no PO boxes. Nothing. Avoid the state like a plague. Two suggestions for PW. First, stress the courage that RDR Books is displaying. In legal disputes money talks far too loudly. They''re in a court battle with what must be the most deep-pocketed book copyright holder on the planet. Rowlings could spend millions on lawyers without blinking. Second, this is a book about the content of the seven Harry Potter books. Your readers might like to know why Scholastic, which published those books in the U.S, isn''t involved in this dispute and why Warner, which did the movies, is. Warner I understand. They''re Hollywood, which means they''re greedy, amoral SOBs. But I''d love to discover that Scholastic has integrity and opposes the lawsuit, recognizing it for what it is, an effort to make it impossible to create any reader''s guide to any work of fiction that isn''t authorized by the copyright holder. That is bad because runs counter to the very purpose of the fair use provisions of copyright law. --Michael W. Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle Author of Untangling Tolkien
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