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JK Rowling being sued for plagiarism

Hugh

Hugh

Member
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010...html?tag=cbsnewsTwoColLowerPromoArea;morenews

AP) J.K. Rowling has been named in a lawsuit alleging she stole ideas for her wildly popular and lucrative "Harry Potter" books from another British author.

The estate of the late Adrian Jacobs on Wednesday added Rowling as a defendant in a lawsuit it filed in June against Bloomsbury Publishing PLC for alleged copyright infringement, according to a statement released by the estate's representatives, who are based in Australia.

The lawsuit, filed in a London court, claims Rowling's book "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" copied substantial parts of Jacobs' 1987 book, "The Adventures of Willy the Wizard - No. 1 Livid Land." Jacobs' estate also claims that many other ideas from "Willy the Wizard" were copied into the "Harry Potter" books. Jacobs died in London in 1997.

"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" is the fourth book in Rowling's series and was published in July 2000.

Sydney agent Max Markson, who is representing the trustee of Jacobs' estate, Paul Allen, said Rowling was added to the lawsuit after Allen learned that the statute of limitations to sue her had not run out, as previously thought.

"I estimate it's a billion-dollar case," Markson said Thursday. "That'll be the decision of the courts, obviously."

J.K. Rowling said the claim was completely untrue.

"I am saddened that yet another claim has been made that I have taken material from another source to write Harry," she said. "The fact is I had never heard of the author or the book before the first accusation by those connected to the author's estate in 2004; I have certainly never read the book.

"The claims that are made are not only unfounded but absurd and I am disappointed that I, and my UK publisher Bloomsbury, are put in a position to have to defend ourselves. We will be applying to the Court immediately for a ruling that the claim is without merit and should therefore be dismissed without delay."

In June, Bloomsbury said the allegation that Rowling lifted from Jacobs' work was "unfounded, unsubstantiated and untrue." Bloomsbury said Jacobs' estate first approached the company in 2004 with its claims, but was unable to identify any text in the "Harry Potter" books that was copied from "Willy the Wizard."

In a statement, Allen said the estate is also seeking legal advice on whether the Harry Potter films and soon-to-be-opened Harry Potter theme park breach copyright law.
 
I believe JK Rowlilng when she says she's never heard of the author and never read the books. This is just a money grab, plain and simple. If I'm not mistaken, the UK allows for defendants to collect their legal fees from plaintiffs if the plaitiffs lose. I certainly hope so.
 
If I'm not mistaken this isn't the first person who's tried to claim that J.K. Rowling stole their idea. I remember watching a biography she did a few years ago, before the first movie came out and she mentioned it on there.

The lawsuit is claiming that its the fourth Harry Potter book that J.K. Rowling plaguarised but by the fourth book she already had her style and the path setout for what was going to happen to Harry, why would she risk changing her style and her readers expectations to copy a one-time wizard book. I hope this claim gets thrown out, J.K. Rowling has done more for children's reading with this series than anyone.
 
I suggest that everybody read Wizard Hall by Jane Yolen. Though Yolen has never taken legal action against Rowling, the similarities between Wizard Hall and the first Harry Potter book are damning for Rowling. She hasn't lost a plagiarism suit yet, but the Potter series was nevertheless born from plagiarism.
 
Eva said:
I suggest that everybody read Wizard Hall by Jane Yolen.
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I may take you up on your suggestion, assuming my library has a copy. It sounds like there is more then a grain of truth to the plagiarism charge. I will say I have read book after book about long and dangerous quests that must be undertaken in order to prevent a great evil from taking over the world a la Tolkien. I wonder who he plagiarized.:D

I think sometimes there are just universally interesting theme's that get formed and reformed over and over again.
 
As it is not available on Google Books even as a preview I can't comment on the content. So I need to ask you a question, is it word for word or majorly plot for plot, or is it just the general idea? Ideas are not copyrightable, if they were all modern day authors would be charged with plagiarism.

I can understand why it hasn't gone to court, there needs to be really some parts taken word for word to prove it was not just the ideas that were borrowed.

Cheers

Peter
 
Poor Rowling--she plagiarized for her first book, then was on the spot to come up with more on her own. To her credit, she did (with the help of a committee of editors). But her foot in the door into the publishing world was plagiarism.

Wizard's Hall is available for $6.95 and it's 144 pages long. If you were willing to read 300 pages for Rowling's first book (and a total of over 4,000 for the series), then you won't find it too much extra effort to get this insight into where Rowling's work came from.

There are archetypes in storytelling, but that isn't what's happening in this case. In Wizard's Hall, a boy who didn't know he had a magical heritage is suddenly sent off by train to a school for young wizards. It's discovered that he is special in several ways. He becomes involved in a long-running, apocalyptic battle between good wizards and wizards gone bad, and he even seems to have been destined to do so. The climactic scene is a life-or-death showdown between him and a teacher who is possessed by a supremely evil wizard. (I don't have the book in front of me, but I think I'm summarizing it accurately.)

Page after page has items that show up in the first Potter book, from the ensemble of characters to the smudge on a boy's nose.
 
i don't think rowling is guilty with this accusation ... i am not reading the book itself ( except the first one ) but i am one of the million fans in harry potter movies .. :D
 
I have been writing for years (about 20!) and have written five books, none of which have been published. I have had some original ideas and insights. I am an avid reader, and occasionally I come across bits in published novels that are so close to stuff I have written that I am dumbfounded. I'm not talking about 'Tom walked down the road and caught the bus', I mean things that are far more detailed and involved, real original thought. Some of these coincidences have been so stunning that if I was published I would be considering suing the author of the later work for plagiarism.

So no, it is very unlikely that J K Rowling used this other author's work. Chances are she's never even heard of it. We are talking of coincidences here, as in the case of my stuff.
 
...and if you don't believe in coincidences, try this: I was once a policeman. I left, and went to work in a very small town in the UK. I rented a couple of rooms and when the landlady heard I was ex-police she told me about a lad who ten years earlier had rented the same rooms. He was a 'bad lot', she said, and ended up in a load of trouble. Five years later I was at university in London. I was a geology student and I flew to Canada to work on a new copper mine in Northern Ontario. The mine was way out in the sticks and 50 miles from the nearest one-horse town. For the mine's opening ceremony they invited folks from the town and I sat next to a man around my age who said he was the local electrician in the town. He was a Brit. He told me he'd got out of Britain because he was always in trouble and was being hounded by the police.

Yes, you've guessed it.

Coincidence, or what?
 
Eva said:
Wizard's Hall is available for $6.95 and it's 144 pages long. If you were willing to read 300 pages for Rowling's first book (and a total of over 4,000 for the series), then you won't find it too much extra effort to get this insight into where Rowling's work came from.
Click to expand...

When you're done reading, we'll talk.
 
There's really not a truly original story line out there. I mean what makes a good story action, adventure, conflict...
 
readsalot said:
There's really not a truly original story line out there. I mean what makes a good story action, adventure, conflict...
Click to expand...

This may be true but there is a difference between using well established tropes to write a story and blatantly ripping of another person's work.
 
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