JK Rowling to judge: 'Don't let them rip off my books'
A three-day trial over an unauthorised Harry Potter encyclopaedia ended with a flash of anger from JK Rowling.
The best-selling British author returned to the witness stand in New York and told a judge that if he allowed the fan-written lexicon to be published, it would clear the way for countless rip-offs of her books, as well as the work of other popular authors.
“I believe the flood gates will open,” Ms Rowling said, her voice rising. “Are we the owners of our own work?”
Ms Rowling was giving evidence for the second time in the trial, which began on Monday in Manhattan. A judge will decide whether to grant her request to block publication of The Harry Potter Lexicon, a guide to the characters, places and spells in her novels, written by a passionate Potter fan.
Middle-school librarian Steven Vander Ark, 50, compiled the material from a website by the same name that he had been operating for years.
RDR Books, the small publisher that talked Mr Vander Ark into putting the website into print, has argued that it is little different than any other reference guide to an important novel and should be allowed to go to press without interference.
On the stand yesterday, Ms Rowling said she was “vehemently anti-censorship” and generally supportive of the right of other authors to write books about her novels. But she said Mr Vander Ark had “plundered” her prose and merely reprinted it in an A-to-Z format.
US District Judge Robert Patterson, who will decide the case, asked Ms Rowling whether she thought anyone would read the lexicon and its list of facts about the wizarding world for “entertainment value”.
“Honestly, no,” Ms Rowling said. The good parts, she said, had simply been lifted from her own work.
“I think there are funny things in there, and I wrote them,” she said.
A decision in the case is not expected soon. It will be weeks before lawyers in the case have finished filing legal documents, and possibly longer before a verdict is rendered.
Earlier in the trial, Mr Vander Ark had described the book as a modest, but extensive guide for fans like himself, and not an attempt at serious scholarship.
US copyright law allows teachers, academics, journalists and critics to use excerpts of an author’s work, but on a limited basis.
Yesterday’s discussion seemed to both delight and dismay Judge Patterson, who began the day by urging the two sides to settle out of court.
He likened the trial to the story Charles Dickens told in 'Bleak House', a novel about the pain caused by endlessly drawn-out cases in the 19th-century British judiciary system.
Judge Patterson predicted a similar fate for the Lexicon case. He said it clearly involved unresolved areas of American law, and was almost certain to end in years of appeals and misery.
“I think this case, with imagination, could be settled,” he said
As the day wore on, however, he seemed fascinated by the subject material, interrupting the lawyers at one point to question the experts himself.
Lawyers on both sides of the Lexicon case appeared to be resolved to continue the litigation, although they revealed in court that they had settled some sections of the suit that were not central to the copyright infringement claim.
The first two days of the trial featured emotional testimony, first by Ms Rowling, then by Mr Vander Ark, each of whom said the case had caused them great personal distress.
Mr Vander Ark wept on the stand during his appearance on Tuesday, saying he had only meant to celebrate Rowling’s books, and instead had to live with criticism from other fans.
