Author JK Rowling is suing a small publishing firm to try and block the publication of an unauthorized lexicon of her work, calling it “wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work,” and “a Harry Potter rip-off of the type I have spent years trying to prevent.”

Judge calls books hard to follow, urges parties to settle
The judge in NY federal court who will decide whether the Harry Potter encyclopedia can be published or whether it violates copyright has said that he read the first half of the first book to his grandchildren and that it was “hard to follow,” and “filled with strange names and words that would be gibberish in any other context.” The judge also urged parties to settle outside of court and said “I think this case, with imagination, could settle. It’s been brought home to me in the last 20 years that litigation is not always the best way to solve things.”

Authors break down on the stand
Both author JK Rowling and the author of the lexicon, 50 year-old Steven Vander Ark, have testified in court. In often emotional testimony Rowling talked about how the books saved her when she was a poverty-striken young mother. Vander Ark broke down crying during his testimony, saying that fans have attacked him for choosing to publish a book based on a popular Harry Potter fan website he maintained for years.

Rowling says she gave author several chances before suing
Rowling says that litigation was her absolute last choice, and that it’s not about money but about theft of ideas. She claims to have asked Vander Ark several times to add more personal commentary and to change her words so that they were not lifted and passed off as his own.

Lawyers for both sides still have plenty of motions and paperwork to submit and it will be weeks before the case is even close to being decided.

You can’t help but think that Rowling would have done better with a jury trial. If that judge got confused by the first book he never could have trudged through the others and is likely to look upon an encyclopedia favorably, even if it’s just a cut and paste of Rowling’s work.

[Details From Timesonline, BBC News, and MSNBC]

JK Rowling outside of federal court today.
JK Rowling is suing RDR books for attempting to publish a print version of a popular Harry Potter fan website, The Harry Potter Lexicon. The suit was filed last year and Rowling will be in U.S. District Court for hearings this week.

Rowling herself is a big fan of the site, and she even wrote on her website in 2004 that she used the Harry Potter Lexicon site to fact check her own work. Selling an encyclopedia that would include many of her own definitions for such things she invented for the Harry Potter series as spells, potions, magical creatures, Quidditch rules and wizarding history would be an extreme copyright violation, she contends, and is much different than a website. Her lawyer says that she personally compared the lexicon to her work and is prepared to testify about the similarities.

The author of the intended Harry Potter encyclopedia, 50 year-old former teacher and librarian Steven Vander Ark, says that he was initially reluctant to publish the book due to the copyright issues. He had the publisher include a section in his contract that they would provide free legal assistance as well as pay for any damages if a lawsuit was brought against him.

Lawyers for the publishing company are not fighting the copyright claim, but plan to defend that the Encyclopedia is legal because it’s for research or another “greater purpose”:

One of [Rowling’s] lawyers, Dan Shallman, on Friday told Judge Robert P. Patterson, who is hearing the trial without a jury, that Rowling “feels like her words were stolen.”

He said the author felt so personally violated that she made her own comparisons among her seven best-selling novels and the lexicon and was ready to testify about the similarities in dozens of instances.

David Saul Hammer, a lawyer for RDR Books, which plans to sell the lexicon, said the publisher will not challenge the claim by Rowling that much of the material in the lexicon infringed her copyrights.

But the judge will decide whether the use of the material by the small Muskegon, Mich., publisher was legal because it was used for some greater purpose, such as a scholarly pursuit.

In court papers filed prior to the trial, Rowling said she was “deeply troubled” by the book.

“If RDR’s position is accepted, it will undoubtedly have a significant, negative impact on the freedoms enjoyed by genuine fans on the Internet,” she said. “Authors everywhere will be forced to protect their creations much more rigorously, which could mean denying well-meaning fans permission to pursue legitimate creative activities.”

[From The Huffington Post]

I read all the Harry Potter books, but I’m not a huge fan and I kind of took them at face value and never tried to dig deeper into the very engaging world Rowling created. You can see how fans would want to get into the fine details of the books and how an encyclopedia of all of the items and history could serve that purpose. That should be Rowling’s decision to put something like that for profit, though. She was supportive of this website until they tried to turn it into a book that would infringe on her ideas and writing, and she has every right to sue to stop its publication.

Update: According to BBC News, Rowling plans to write her own Harry Potter encyclopedia.

Every time I hear about another gold digger like Heather Mills, who just became a millionaire simply by divorcing her husband of four years, Paul McCartney, I try to think about women who became wealthy on their own merits, like author J.K. Rowling. I just love her story- a single mom on welfare who writes a novel about a boy wizard, becomes a sensation and ultimately a billionaire. Now, Rowling is opening up about her dark says as a single mom, admitting that she fell into a deep depression after her divorce and even contemplated suicide– but was determined to beat depression for her young daughter’s sake.

Rowling… admits that she contemplated taking her own life back in the early 1990s, after separating from her first husband, Portuguese journalist Jorge Arantes.

“We’re talking suicidal thoughts here, we’re not talking ‘I’m a little bit miserable,’ ” Rowling told [an Edinburgh University student magazine]

“Mid-twenties life circumstances were poor and I really plummeted,” Rowling said, recalling friends had to help her pay the security deposit for her apartment rental – where she would eventually begin writing about the boy wizard, which would spawn a $14 billion industry.

“The thing that made me go for help was probably my daughter,” said Rowling, referring to the then-infant, Jessica, reports the Telegraph. “She was something that earthed me, grounded me, and I thought, this isn’t right, this can’t be right, she cannot grow up with me in this state.”

‘Get Out’ of Depression
Through a circuitous route – her regular doctor was away at the time of her crisis – Rowling eventually met with a therapist, who helped her “get out” of the depression.

“The funny thing is, I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never,” she says. “I think I’m abnormally shameless on that account because what’s to be ashamed of?”

Seeking to remove any stigma that might be attached to seeking counseling, Rowing now advises all those suffering from depression to “go and get help.”

[From People]

I couldn’t agree more- there should be no shame in admitting to depression and getting help for it. Just think how differently Rowling’s life might have turned out if she hadn’t! Hopefully it’s a thing of the past for good for the author, and she is hard at work on her next book. Although, if I had to top the success of Harry Potter, I might be a little depressed myself.

Note by Celebitchy: Rowling has written another children’s book, which she calls “political fairy story” and some short stories that may soon be published. She has no plans to write another Harry Potter sequel, but says she’ll never say never.

JK Rowling is shown at the premiere of Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix on 7/3/07, thanks to PRPhotos.

The “Harry Potter” books may be complete, but there are still three full length films coming, to make a whopping eight Harry Potter movies in total. The movie version of the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, will be in theaters at the end of this November. And the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which was chock full of plot that sped by at a breakneck pace, is going to be split up into two films in order to cover all the stuff that happened. (Rowling has not definitively ruled out another book, saying “I will not say never, but I have no plans to write an eighth book.” She later clarified that if she did write another book it wouldn’t be for at least another 10 years.)

The films have made around $4.5 billion at the box office, and that’s not counting the books and merchandise, which are said to make the franchise worth $15 billion. So you can’t blame them for wanting to milk this for all it’s worth, but it’s also supposedly to be true to the plot of Deathly Hallows:

Warner Bros. Pictures and the producers behind the $4.5-billion film franchise featuring the beloved boy wizard will split the seventh and final novel in the J.K. Rowling series into two films.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I” will hit theaters in November 2010, followed by “Part II” in May 2011, a decision that is being met around the world with fans’ cheers but also plenty of cynical smirks. The publishing industry is learning to live without new “Potter” releases, but Hollywood just pulled off a trick that will keep its profitable hero on his broom into the next decade.

Any twist in the “Potter” universe is the stuff of global news bulletins. The books were a publishing sensation. And to an entire generation, the film saga has become a heartfelt touchstone on the level of “The Wizard of Oz” and as culturally and commercially ubiquitous as the “Star Wars” series. For all those reasons, everyone involved in the franchise is jumping forward to say an eighth film would be to serve the story, not the bottom line.

Daniel Radcliffe, the star of the franchise, said it was the dense action of the final novel that made the decision, not any executive or ledger.

“I think it’s the only way you can do it, without cutting out a huge portion of the book,” Radcliffe said. “There have been compartmentalized subplots in the other books that have made them easier to cut — although those cuts were still to the horror of some fans — but the seventh book doesn’t really have any subplots. It’s one driving, pounding story from the word go.”

The same could be said about the relentless “Potter” franchise, which hit screens for the first time in 2001. The five “Potter” films to date have averaged $282 million in U.S. grosses, but the overall receipts go well beyond that. The faces of the stars stare out from DVDs, video games, tie-in books, toys, clothing, candy wrappers and a staggering array of other items. By some estimates, the brand represents a $20-billion enterprise, and that’s without the planned “Potter”-themed complex opening next year at the Universal Orlando Resort in Florida.

[From The LA Times]

I’ve read all the Harry Potter books and have seen all of the films, in most cases right when they came out. At first I was a big fan, but by the fourth book, The Goblet of Fire, I thought that the tone changed and that Rowling was trying to cram too much in. This didn’t stop me from devouring the rest of the books and films, so it’s not like the quality dropped that much, and maybe it was inevitable that they evolved and grew along with the characters.

The last book was disappointing to me, and I know a lot of you will disagree. I will admit that I read it quickly and could not put it down and that it was very entertaining. It just didn’t get into the characters enough for me and it seemed like too much was happening on a surface level. I also was kind of baffled by the afterlife subplot, and thought that part was totally unnecessary. You could almost tell that Rowling was harried when she wrote it, and that she was trying to tie up all the loose ends instead of get into the motivations and psychology of the characters. The end part where everyone was married and happy bugged the shit out of me, too. (I know this is said to have been written well ahead of the final book, and that Rowling was supposedly doing everyone a favor by letting us know. She should have saved it, IMO.)

I’ll see these movies, and they’re going to be blockbusters that are entertaining and engaging, like all the other Harry Potter films. Even though I thought Deathly Hallows was the “worst” Harry Potter book, that’s definitely relative. It was still fun to read and full of compelling scenes, and the films are sure to be the same. The last Lord of The Rings movie, The Return of The King, could have easily been broken up into two films too, but it kept my interest until the end. And I would have paid $20 to see it.

Images are stills from Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, thanks to Allmoviephoto.

I have an embarrassing confession to make: I’ve never read a single Harry Potter book. I’ll wait while you throw heavy objects at me. Yes I know they’re wonderful, and I hate that kids spend so much time with their faces plastered to televisions, video games, and computers. Anything that gets kids reading is great to me. I’m just not into the fantasy/magical genre, and yes I get yelled at whenever it comes up. I know the general premise and have been forced to a few of the movies. I’ll just admit to all that now, in case I accidentally say something that’s just totally dumb, Harry Potter-wise.

J.K. Rowling gave a reading of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” at Carnegie Hall the other day, during which a reader asked her if Dumbledore would ever find love. She responded that Dumbledore was gay. That’s interesting, but it doesn’t really answer the question, does it?

Although suspected for some time by avid readers of her famously popular fantasy novels, J.K. Rowling has officially noted that master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts is a homosexual. The remarks came as Rowling spoke to a packed audience at Carnegie Hall, where she did a reading of parts of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” A fan asked if Albus Dumbledore would find love some day, to which Rowling replied: “Dumbledore is gay.”

She then explained that the wizard had been in love with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. “Falling in love can blind us to an extent,” Rowling said of Dumbledore’s feelings, adding that Dumbledore was “horribly, terribly let down.” Speculation on Dumbledore’s sexual orientation has been debated among fans for years. Rowling added that while working on the planned sixth Potter film, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” she spotted a reference in the script to a girl who once was of interest to Dumbledore. A note was duly passed to director David Yates, revealing the truth about the character.

[From the Daily News]

Is this going to cause the religious fundamentalists to boycott Harry Potter? I’m a little concerned. I didn’t realize there were so many levels and such subtlety to the books. Apparently when Rowling said Dumbledore was gay, there were gasps and applause. So you know, pretty much like most people’s coming out. Just on a slightly grander scale.

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s J.K. Rowling at the “Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix” premiere on July 3, 2007 in London. Images thanks to PR Photos.

Illustrating how ridiculous airport security has become in the wake of several terrorist threats, J.K Rowling was initially told to throw out her only manuscript of the last book in the “Harry Potter” series before boarding a London-bound plane. Instead of admitting it was mistake, an official from the TSA decided to lie and act like it never happened:

Rowling said she would have sailed back to London before parting with the last book in the “Harry Potter” series.

Sure, a priceless manuscript would be allowed to be carried on - only if the passenger was sufficiently famous and persistent and kiss-ass enough to convince airport staff to relax their arbitrary rules. If J.K. Rowling can’t bring on a manuscript, I guess that means I’m stuck reading the Skymall catalog the next time I’m forced to take a trans-Atlantic flight.