JKR&WB file response to suit by HP Lexicon.

JKR and WB have filed a response to the latest filing by RDR Books in the ongoing lawsuit against the publishers of the intended book version of the Harry Potter Lexicon. The filings are just coming in, so this post will be updated often; so far we have information on the declarations by J.K. Rowling, author of HP; Cheryl Klein, senior editor at Scholastic Books; Prof. Landes from the University of Chicago and Suzanne Murphy from Scholastic. (Now updated with Emily Blumsack’s declaration, Jerri Johnson’s declaration, and the components of the main statement.)

This is the last filing before a hearing on March 13 to determine if a preliminary injunction will be granted. After that there still may or may not be a trial to determine if infringement has taken place.

The main statement says that JKR/WB has proved likelihood of success (if the judge thinks so too it will affect the case’s forward motion, if any) and that the proposed book copies an enormous amount of Harry Potter work verbatim. It also says the proposed book falls under a definition of derivative that RDR ignored in its assessment: that it is a “work based on one or more pre-existing works.” It says the book is “nothing more than a recast of Ms. Rowling’s original text,” which differentiates it from the Ty Beanie Baby book cited by RDR because that book contained “critical and evaluative” elements.

It also says the book has been called “supplementary” based solely on a “1966 academic lecture” discussing extending a 101-year-old act’s provisions for forewords, prefaces, prologues, epilogues and bibliographies.

http://the-leaky-cauldron.org/2008/2/28/jkr-wb-respond-in-lexicon-suit