JKR's suit against RDR Books

[pegkerr]

I'm really sorry to hear about all this. I certainly like the Harry Potter Lexicon, and I consider Steve Vander Ark a personal friend; Rob and I worked with him on the HPEF Board of Directors. But geez, if praetorianguard is correct about the sequence of events, then as a holder of copyrights myself, I have to agree with praetorianguard. I don't think that RDR Books or Steve have a legal leg to stand on, and they're gonna lose this case. As well they should. No matter how much they bluster.

Personally, I am going to find this all extremely painful to watch.

(A good chunk of the complaint and quite a bit of discussion over at The Leaky Cauldron here.)

Comments

[folk.livejournal.com]

Well, "passing off' is what the legal terminology is, I think. Basically, if my gran goes into a bookstore, sees seven books with HARRY POTTER AND THE ________________ and one that says HARRY POTTER LEXICON in the same font, then she's likely to be confused; that's "passing off". Remember way back when that first unauthorised HP companion book came out, and it was bright purple and didn't have the HP fonts or anything? That's why they did that, and I can't figure out why anybody thought doing it this way was okay.

Ditto.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I hadn't even heard that Steve was planning to publish a paper Lexicon until I heard about the suit. I was quite shocked. I can't imagine what Steve was thinking.

[folk.livejournal.com]

Me neither, on both counts.