Bloomberg Businessweek | Harry Potter Author Is Defendant in Plagiarism Suit (Update1)

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

Author: Lindsay Fortado

(Adds Rowling comment starting in fourth paragraph.)

Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -- J.K. Rowling, the world’s richest author, was added as a defendant in a U.K. lawsuit against her publishers alleging that she copied part of a children’s book in writing “Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire.”

The estate of English author Adrian Jacobs alleges in the complaint that part of his 1987 book, “The Adventures of Willy the Wizard: No. 1 Livid Land,” was copied by Rowling. A year of wizard contests in the book was similar to a central theme of “The Goblet of Fire,” the estate says, according to a statement it issued today on PR Newswire issued today.

Jacobs’s estate sued Bloomsbury Publishing Plc in a London court in June, according to the statement. The estate claims that Jacobs used concepts and themes such as wizard prisons, wizard hospitals and wizard colleges before Rowling did. The two authors also shared an agent, Christopher Little, who manages the Harry Potter brand worldwide, according to the statement.

“I am saddened that yet another claim has been made that I have taken material from another source to write Harry,” Rowling said today in a statement e-mailed by spokesman Mark Hutchinson. “The fact is I had never heard of the author or the book before the first accusation by those connected to the author’s estate in 2004; I have certainly never read the book.”

The estate said it added Rowling to the suit under her married name, Joanne Kathleen Murray, “after discovering legal cause of action against her within the last six years.”

‘Out of Time’

“Previously we were advised we were ‘out of time’ to bring an action against J.K. Rowling herself as ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ was published in the year 2000,” the estate said.

Rowling and Bloomsbury will ask the court to rule that the claim is without merit and to dismiss it immediately, she said.

“The claims that are made are not only unfounded but absurd and I am disappointed that I, and my U.K. publisher Bloomsbury, are put in a position to have to defend ourselves,” Rowling said.

James Caulfield, a spokesman for the law firm DMH Stallard LLP, which is representing Bloomsbury in the suit, declined to comment.

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