German newspaper Die Zeit has

German newspaper Die Zeit has a critical look at how Warner Bros. is handling the Harry Potter license. Harry Potter Galleries has written this overview:

The Americans do not want the real Potter boom starting now, because the Harry Potter movie is still months away. They want the merchandising to really intensify this fall, in order to achieve a concentrated, mutually intensifying sales explosion on all fields of the business. According to the German daily newspaper FAZ, Warner Bros. expects merchandising sales of approximately one billion dollars around the movie. The world company tries to stop everything, which does not correspond to its conception. A world-wide commercial fight was inflamed over Harry Potter – and even the experienced businessmen from the toy industry now talk about the American cultural imperialism, which does not get along with Joanne K. Rowlings charmful literary intentions.

The US enterprise obviously wants still more power over Harry Potter than the terrible Lord Voldemort. An extensive Style Guide determines exactly, how products have to look, which colours may be combined with which logos and pictures. More rigid critics call Warners visualization of Harry Potter flat, more vulgar, and are annoyed that the American design is to displace more successful national Harry Potters.

Warner Bros. takes action against competitors. Above all the Americans must fear the German version of the Hamburg illustrator Sabine Wilharm for Carlsen Publishing, because it is original and good. After the German magazine Stern had illustrated a title story for the release of the fourth Potter with the Wilharm drawings, the publishing house Gruner + Jahr and the artist received warnings. Warner, as announced by a Berlin law office, sees its rights violated, and demands to stop such publications in the future.