I would like to thank each and every one of you for your support in recent days. Everyone here at the Lexicon, all volunteers, regrets the unpleasantness. We have always been interested in working with the publishers of the novels to satisfy their concerns, interests and needs and we certainly do not plan nor have we ever planned to publish anything which competes with Ms. Rowling’s fine literary capabilities. Our work has nothing to do with fiction writing and is only concerned with legitimate critical analysis and academic considerations. It has been widely approved and employed by Ms. Rowling herself.
My book was started in response to many, many people who talked to me and asked if there could be a print version of the Lexicon, not in some sort of attempt to profit off of fans. Because the material for the book was not only accepted but praised and used frequently by every entity concerned with creating the Harry Potter books, games, and films, I would never have thought that a print version could be judged differently.
I sincerely hope that this matter can be resolved amicably and ask for you patience and understanding during that process.
Other new details are as follows: Following yesterday’s post which said there was a possibility that essays would be included in the Lexicon, several Lexicon essay writers have publicly said that they were not asked for permission to have their essay reprinted, and some essay writers have been assured by Lexicon staff that there will be no essays in the book at all. We have asked the publisher which is correct and will amend this post if we get an answer.
Update: RDR books answered our query with a lengthy statement that neither confirmed nor denied. We’ve asked for a more direct answer and have yet to receive one.
Update 2: TLC has received word via a reliable source that the initial email to Steve Vander Ark and RDR Books was phrased as an attempt to appeal to the Lexicon’s status as a site favored by J.K. Rowling. It also, according to the source, clearly named Warner Bros. as at stake and called Vander Ark a friend of the series and someone publishers/lawyers/agents were sure did not want to disrupt Rowling’s rights. RDR has called the email “threatening and abusive” and claimed that Warner Bros. only claimed rights after RDR sent them a letter regarding the timeline on the Harry Potter DVDs.
Also in the time since this issue began the book has risen from ranked lower than 230,000 in Amazon.co.uk books, to 7,034 as of this posting.
Update 3: A reader has commented that they ordered the book in the UK, which was slated to have a Nov. 5, 2007, publication date; the order was pushed back to January, 4, 2008, instead.
The Harry Potter Lexicon is a partner site to The Leaky Cauldron. The opinions and claims argued here do not constitute The Leaky Cauldron’s opinion or claim (of which it has none).
Interesting. You know, I was pretty much of the camp that it was a bad idea and should be dropped, but everyone probably went into it with okay intentions. But, Steve and the publisher are handling this very poorly. The flashing banners, the pre-order buttons. Soooo classy.
Harry Potter® and the names of all fictitious people and places are trademarks of Warner Bros. Neither the author, his staff members, www.HP.-Lexicon.org nor the publisher is in any way affiliated with Warner Bros., Scholastic Books, J.K. Rowling or any other person or company claiming an interest in the Harry Potter® novels. The Harry Potter Lexicon respects the intellectual property rights of others and urges users of this book to do the same.
1. Please don’t try and compare what Steve has done at the Lexicon with a scientific paper. The HP books are fiction, and facts about fictional books and fictional worlds are NOT in the public domain. Why? Because those “facts” belong to the author that made them up in the first place. Ergo, all of the “facts” that Steve has organized on his site belong to JKR. Not him.
2. Real classy, Steve. Trying to pass all of this off as poor widdle you catering to the ickle fans who wanted a print version? Try again. You know, I might have had a bit of sympathy for you, thinking you got lousy legal advice or something, but after reading your statement, I realize you’re just trying to pass the buck on to fandom instead of being a man and taking responsibility for your own actions.
I’m sick of the steve bashing. The best post I have seen about this from a non-hp fan was posted by William Patry (a copyright lawyer). There are also some interesting comments.
There’s a lot of copyright lawyers who have posted things. Since no one’s seen the book they can’t really know what’s there.
If that’s such a fantastic treatment of the subject, how does it contain this line:
“She doesn’t add, no doubt because it is not the case, that the profits will go to charity, only her royalties. “
Has this guy not had the thorough lawyerly expertise to read through ANY article on this subject at all, all of which make it STUPIDLY CLEAR that JKR is writing these books for charity?
It’s also really funny that a copyright lawyer is trying to argue that she doesn’t have the right to her copyright simply because of the chance she’d profit off it. What? She’s not allowed to profit but surely her fans, who didn’t create it, are? LOL. OK. This guy was a lawyer for the US govt and Google? Poor them.
Steve should be criticized, because he’s acting like he’s entitled to publish his Lexicon just because JKR and WB have used his site in the past. It doesn’t work that way.
I’m sorry, but when the people who actually own the legal rights to Harry Potter are telling you not to publish, then ignoring them and provoking them into a lawsuit is your own fault. He brought all of this on himself by thinking that he was somehow exempt from copyright/trademark infringement because of who he is.
Dead serious. They took the comments off today but it read like this, because I saved it, because it was so funny:’
Summarizing Ms. Nelson’s view, one reporter wrote that Warner’s “cease and desist letters constituted an attempt to open a dialogue.” How could that be?
This is obviously a contradiction in terms. It reminds of a statement made by General Leslie Groves when he was asked if the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was leading to lingering deaths of tens of thousands of civilian. He said that fallout radiation was causing no “undue suffering” and characterized it “as a very pleasant way to die.” How does threatening to censor the publication of a reference book, sue someone for millions of dollars and put them out of business “constitute an attempt to open a dialogue?”
HE COMPARED IT TO HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI.
What was I thinking? This is clearly JUST as important. Holy cow.
@ Ashes, who said: The lawsuit does claim copywrite infringment. I think the argument, by which I mean response (or defense since we’re dealing in legal terms) won’t be that its not copywrite infringemnt, but rather that copywrite law doesn’t apply at all.
A crash-course in copyright law and this lawsuit: a verbatim quote from Legal Beagle…
“The difference between opinion and a legal precedent is that the former has no validity in court, however well informed or well intentioned; the latter is what the sitting judge will determine damages and set awards.
This is, from the lawyers’ point of view, a LEGAL matter, not one of fan opinion.
From a legal point of view, the matter at hand is clear-cut: This is a matter of what’s called “derivative use.” It means that the copyright holder – in this case, Joanne Rowling – can mine her own work to construct quiz-books, puzzle books, and encyclopedias.
In the matter of derivative use, the key criterion is whether or not an unofficial/unauthorized book merely REARRANGES the existing text to recast a “new book.”
When viewed in that light, Mr. Vander Ark’s book fares poor legally because it is 100% (judging from the his website) based on what’s in Rowling’s books.
Mr. Vander Ark’s proposed book is not commentary; it’s not opinion; it’s a re-edited edition of what Rowling has carefully chronicled in her book.
The legal precedent for this was when a publisher issued an unauthorized “Seinfeld” quiz book. The court decided that there was nothing original added, that it was all re-purposed, and that everything had been drawn from the television series. Therefore, as all the material was derivative use, the unauthorized book was held legally accountable for damages.
Give Rowling and her lawyers a little credit: They don’t sue capriciously; they sue when they feel they have no other choice in protecting their rights.
This explains why two former encyclopedias – AN UNOFFICIAL MUGGLE’S GUIDE TO THE WIZARDING WORLD: EXPLORING THE HARRY POTTER UNIVERSE (ECW Press) and THE J.K. ROWLING ENCYCLOPEDIA by Connie Ann Kirk – are probably out of print: The amount of derived material exceeded what’s called “fair use,” which is the test as to whether or not a work is considered to be within the legal limits:
“1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. amount and sutstantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work [see www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html].
Rowling’s lawyers will likely cite that Vander Ark’s book (point 1) is for profit, (points 2 and 3) is principally or wholly derivative in content, and (point 4) will have a deleterious effect on the sale of Rowling’s own encyclopedia.
Of these points, in my considered opinion, only #4 will materially fail as fans of Rowling may buy an unofficial encyclopedia, but will buy the authorized book no matter what. The publication of an unofficial encyclopedia will not substantially hinder sales of the official one. In other words, some fans will likely by both, but no fan will buy the unofficial one in favor of the official one.
As for the proposed Mugglenet.com book (UNOFFICIAL HARRY POTTER COMPANION: THE ENCYCLOPEDIC GUIDE TO THE BOOKS, MOVIES AND MORE), it depends on how Mr. Spartz and Mr. Schoen handle the material: If it’s straightforward in encyclopedic format and uses the same material as Kirk’s J.K. ROWLING ENCYCLOPEDIA and Fionna Boyle’s UNOFFICIAL MUGGLE’S GUIDE TO THE WIZARDING WORLD, then it too may be on the lawyers’ radar. If, however, the text is not derivative, in terms of encyclopedia entries, and has original material (extensive commentary, contextual information) and stays away from a bare bones misappropriation of Rowling’s original texts, then it may (and I use that word guardedly) escape the hangman’s noose.
Bottom line here, folks, it’s not about whether Mr. Vander Ark is a great asset to the Harry Potter community (legally, that’s a non-issue); doesn’t matter if Rowling uses his website for reference and has praised it (legally, both are non-issues); doesn’t matter if Rowling is a multi-millionaire (legally, a non-issue); and it doesn’t matter that Mr. Vander Ark has spent years researching Rowling’s universe. Doesn’t matter. What DOES matter is whether or not the book is substantially derived from Rowling’s texts.
That’s what the sitting judge will decide after examining the manuscript or finished book, and that judge will cite the aforementioned legal precedent regarding the Seinfeld quiz book.
Class is dismissed!”
*
Clear, concise, and to the point. When she turned down his request to co-author an encyclopedia, he should have accepted that. Instead he made a print version of his web site and sold it for profit. Now he’s in a very sticky situation, with a publisher who’s obviously not comprehending that the stuff’s hit the fan and someone’s gonna pay for it.
Pat, I notice this sentence in the blog article you’ve linked to:
“[Jo] doesn’t add, no doubt because it is not the case, that the profits will go to charity, only her royalties.”
Anyone who has such apparent and baseless disdain for Jo Rowling gets no respect in my book, no matter how eloquently they argue.
Also, the comparison to Jose Luis Borges, who’s been dead for over twenty years, is totally fallacious. Dead people have a hard time of filing suits against those who write dictionaries based on their works.
At any rate, although I’ll wait until the last shoe has fallen to make up my mind completely, I’m thinking that not a single person in this comments section finds themselves more convinced of Steve’s party’s innocence in this matter after reading (and digesting) his statement.
I find Steve Vander Ark to be a total publicity stunt with his website almost being published for Harry Potter fans to read.
I wouldn’t be saying this unless I had proof either, I actually thought publishing an encyclopedia would be an amazing
idea too. Here’s basically what happened:
One of my readers, Matthew used to be my co-webmaster when I used to make Harry Potter websites, and just last year I
approached this idea to him. He thought it would be cool too and we thought we should approach Steve and Melissa
(from The Leaky Cauldron) to see what they would think. Here’s that e-mail:
and have been with it for several years. You may know us from a past website, The Potter Prophet.
Harry Potter Encyclopedia. We decided to attempt to affiliate with you guys, The Lexicon and The Wizarding World Press to make this possible.
would have to fill us in about any fees and requirements we need to have to publish a book. The both of us are
not very wealthy, so it would be difficult for us to pay off any required fees.
Thank you both for your time,
Matt *
Jessica *
Steve took the time to reply to us (and forward his reply to Melissa aswell) telling us it would probably not be a
good idea. This was due to the fact that he thought about the copyright infringement lawsuit that could
occur. He also stated that many people and publishers had asked him in the past.
rights to her intellectual property, which means that she’s the only one who may publish any book that is a guide
or encyclopedia to her world. And since we’re fans and supporters of Jo, we wouldn’t do anything that would violate
her rights, even if we could get away with it. We wouldn’t get away with it, though, since Neil Blair, her solicitor, is
very quick to defend his illustrious client in things like this.
series is finished, I plan to petition Jo to allow the Lexicon to work with her to create the ultimate Harry Potter
encyclopedia. In the mean time, we’ll have to use the various online resources.
Thanks for the email!
Steve
Steve Vander Ark
The Harry Potter Lexicon
What I hope you get out of this is that Steve indeed knew that this was wrong for him to even do, so I
put this all a his fault. He knew that he would end up having to battle Neil Blair in court (just like I have i
n the past few years). Mrs. Rowling’s lawyer is the toughest I have ever seen and if he doesn’t see any
money being pulled out, he’ll eventually call up their financial company to try and scare you off with
sums around a thousand dollars. I’ve been there, I know how it is. I think Steve should have thought
better before he left something like this happen.
Posted by look what i found on November 05, 2007, 06:17 AM
report to moderator
"First years ought to know that the forest in the grounds is out of bounds to students -- and a few of our older students ought to know by now too." (Harry, Ron, and Hermione exchanged smirks.)
Interesting. You know, I was pretty much of the camp that it was a bad idea and should be dropped, but everyone probably went into it with okay intentions. But, Steve and the publisher are handling this very poorly. The flashing banners, the pre-order buttons. Soooo classy.