Legal disputes over the Harry Potter series

[1] The worldwide popularity of the Harry Potter series has led to the appearance of a number of locally-produced, unauthorised sequels and other derivative works, leading to efforts to ban or contain them.

[4] Another area of legal dispute involves a series of injunctions obtained by Rowling and her publishers to prohibit anyone from distributing or reading her books before their official release dates.

In 2005, a man was sentenced to four years in prison after firing a replica gun at a journalist during a staged deal for stolen copies of an unreleased Harry Potter novel, and attempting to blackmail the publisher with threats of releasing secrets from the book.

The court found in Rowling's favour, granting summary judgment and holding that "no reasonable juror could find a likelihood of confusion as to the source of the two parties' works".

[12] During the course of the trial, it was held that Rowling proved "by clear and convincing evidence, that Stouffer has perpetrated a fraud on the Court through her submission of fraudulent documents as well as through her untruthful testimony",[12] including changing pages years after the fact to retroactively insert the word "muggle".

[12] Her case was dismissed with prejudice and she was fined $50,000 for her "pattern of intentional bad faith conduct" in relation to her employment of fraudulent submissions, as well as being ordered to pay a portion of the plaintiffs' legal fees.

[17] Rowling had written a scene in the novel in which a band called the Weird Sisters appeared at a school dance, and the group owned the rights to the name in Canada.

In June 2006, an Ontario judge decreed that the band pay Warner Bros. CAD$140,000 in legal costs, describing their lawsuit as "highly intrusive".

[19] Jarvis Cocker initially wished to release an album of "Weird Sisters"-themed music with collaborators including Franz Ferdinand, Jack White and Iggy Pop, but the project was dropped as a result of the lawsuit.

In June 2009, the estate of Adrian Jacobs, a children's author who died in 1997, sued Rowling's publishers, Bloomsbury, for £500 million, accusing her of having plagiarised "substantial parts" of his work in writing the novel Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Both Willy and Harry are required to work out the exact nature of the main task of the contest which they both achieve in a bathroom assisted by clues from helpers, in order to discover how to rescue human hostages imprisoned by a community of half-human, half-animal fantasy creatures.

[24] In July 2010, the estate filed suit against Rowling's American publisher, Scholastic, demanding that the company burn all copies of Goblet of Fire.

[30] In 2002, an unauthorised Chinese-language sequel titled Harry Potter and Bao Zoulong (Chinese: Simplified: 哈利波特与豹走龙, Traditional: 哈利波特與豹走龍, Hanyu Pinyin: Hālì Bōtè yǔ Bào Zǒulóng) appeared for sale in the People's Republic of China.

In 2007, Rowling's agents, the Christopher Little Literary Agency, began to discuss the possibility of legal proceedings concerning a fake version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that appeared in China ten days before the actual book's publication.

[37] Also in 2003, courts in the Netherlands prevented the distribution of a Dutch translation of Tanya Grotter and the Magical Double Bass, the first of Dmitri Yemets' popular Russian series about a female apprentice wizard.

[39] Rowling did not sue, and the book, which Dutch people could buy by postal order from another Flemish publisher, Boekhandel VanIn, soon sold out.

[4] The action resulted in negative publicity for the company when the 15-year-old webmaster of the British fansite harrypotterguide.co.uk was reduced to tears by what were described by her father as unnecessary bully tactics.

[45] The publication received notice from Rowling's lawyers that the comics breached copyright, though the magazine's editor, Ken Crunk, claimed that no violation had taken place, as "[t]he drawings do not look like any of the characters from Harry Potter".

[50] In June 2007, eBay filed papers with the Delhi High Court, alleging that Rowling had caused them "immense humiliation and harassment".

[50] In October 2007, Warner Bros. sued a group constructing a façade during a Hindu religious festival in the Indian city of Kolkata for ₹2 million (US$23,000), claiming that they had erected a giant replica of Harry Potter's school, Hogwarts, without their permission.

[57] In their suit, Rowling's lawyers also asserted that, as the book describes itself as a print facsimile of the Harry Potter Lexicon website, it would publish excerpts from the novels and stills from the films without offering sufficient "transformative" material to be considered a separate work.

A specialist in intellectual property law at Strathclyde University commented that, "If an insubstantial character from a novel is taken and built up by another author in a new story, that can be a defence against copyright infringements.

In an official statement, Scholastic appealed "to the Harry Potter fans who bought their books from DeepDiscount.com and may receive copies early requesting that they keep the packages hidden until midnight on 21 July.

"[70] Customers who agreed not to read the book received a special Harry Potter t-shirt and a $50 coupon for Scholastic's online store.

In June 2005, Aaron Lambert, a security guard at a book distribution centre in Corby, Northamptonshire, England, stole a number of pages from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince six weeks before its intended publication date.

[71] At his trial the following October, Lambert pleaded guilty to threatening Askill and to attempting to blackmail Harry Potter's publishers, Bloomsbury.

Two days later, Bloomsbury responded that the claims were "potentially libellous" and that: Asda's latest attempt to draw attention to themselves involves trying to leap on the Harry Potter bandwagon.

It could be good news for all their disappointed customers, because they don't have to go to a soulless Asda shed to buy their book and they can share the magic of Harry Potter at an independent or specialist bookstore instead.

Neill Denny, commentator for thebookseller.com, opined that "the whole episode has the whiff of a badly-conceived PR stunt by ill-briefed senior executives at Asda out of touch with the subtleties of the book world.

"[78] Ralph Baxter of Publishing News concurred: "For Asda ... it may be seen as mission accomplished, a high-risk strategy to maximise publicity for its Harry Potter offer rewarded with television, radio, Internet and newspaper coverage.