EVEN Harry Potter's wizardry may not prevail in Manhattan's Federal District Court. That's where Harry's creator, author J.K. Rowling, and Warner Brothers Entertainment are suing to stop the publication of a book that she didn't write, an encyclopedia about her seven Potter books called the "Harry Potter Lexicon."
Rowling says that the lexicon is a "sloppy" case of copyright infringement and plagiarism. But RDR Books, the lexicon's Michigan publisher, says the book is an example of "fair use," a legal concept that grants limited use of copyrighted material in reviews, news stories, scholarly works, and parodies.
A judge will decide the outcome. But win or lose, Rowling could have the final word.
The Harry Potter Lexicon started in 2000 as a website created by Steve Vander Ark. On the site, he says he has always made notes about things he enjoys, including a "huge chart" of episodes of the 1960s television show "Hogan's Heroes" and notebooks full of "Star Trek" facts. Now the Potter lexicon site has the encyclopedia, essays, a forum, and the hefty legal support of Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project.
As for Rowling, she could seek counsel from the ghost of Miguel de Cervantes. In 1605, he published the first part of "Don Quixote" (itself an apparent takeoff on other authors' chivalric tales). But before Cervantes could finish a sequel, another author put one out, a book written under the pen name Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda.
Cervantes responded with his own part two, in which Don Quixote yanks the narrative back into his own hands by citing the false book and choosing not to go to a town where Avellaneda had sent him, so that "people will see that I am not the Don Quixote he says I am," according to Edith Grossman's 2003 translation.
Rowling's best defense is her own pen, her own unique ability to write about a world that she knows best.
