Girl, 15, faces legal action over Harry Potter site
A 15-year-old Singaporean girl says she will not surrender the rights to her Harry Potter internet site despite the threat of legal action.
Chan started her web site in October 1999, but has now been asked by Time Warner Entertainment and author J.K. Rowling to surrender the site's name.
Chan is the registered owner of the disputed domain name harrypotternetwork.net, although her Harry Potter internet site is found at www.thehpn.com.
"I got the domain name harrypotternetwork.net and I was going to use it but I decided I didn't like it and just hung on to it," Chan said.
After registering the web site domain, or internet address, Chan received a letter from lawyers representing Time Warner Entertainment and Rowling.
It said she had to surrender the domain because the name 'Harry Potter' was the intellectual property of his clients.
In a letter from Dennis Wilson, of the Beverly Hills law firm Keats McFarland & Wilson, Chan's internet site managers were told to transfer the ownership of the domain name to Time Warner and Rowling.
"Our clients have a legal responsibility to protect their trademark rights, and to ensure that consumers are not confused. In that regard, we have previously filed complaints with ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the governing body for Internet domain names, to recover domain names which incorporate the Harry Potter Properties," the letter said.
Chan said that Time Warner had not so far threatened to take her to court, as she had complied with most of their requests. The notice from Time Warner also asked Chan to remove images from her site or credit them to the entertainment giant.
