Saturday, January 05, 2008

Stanford Law Group to Aid Defense of Harry Potter Guide

From the AP:

NEW YORK — A group of crusading intellectual property lawyers at Stanford Law School say they will help defend a small publishing house being sued by author J.K. Rowling over its plan to print an unauthorized companion guide to her Harry Potter series.

The Fair Use Project at Stanford's Center for Internet and Society announced Tuesday that it had signed on to aid the defense of Michigan-based RDR Books, which had planned to release "The Harry Potter Lexicon" this fall.

The book's publication has been blocked by the lawsuit. Rowling and Warner Bros., which produces the Harry Potter movies and holds the copyright on the seven novels, have argued that the lexicon borrows too heavily from the books and amounts to copyright and trademark infringement.

Fair Use Project Executive Director Anthony Falzone said the lexicon is protected by U.S. rules that have long given people "the right to create reference guides that discuss literary works, comment on them and make them more accessible."

You can read the rest here and here and here. We're also talking about it over tea at Shell Cottage.

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