Bloomsbury facing plagiarism lawsuit over HP

[gryff_slytherin]

The British publisher of 'Harry Potter' books faces a plagiarism lawsuit from Adrian Jacobs' estate who wrote the book, Willy the Wizard, in 1987.

Er, what?? This sounds sort of really fishy. Why are they bring up the lawsuit now if this is about Goblet of Fire, eight years after it was published?? And if anyone has seen JKR talk about Harry

Comments

[substancja]

Annoying. Totally annoying.

[ldymusyc]

One anonymous review from five years ago sounds a lot like the author or his estate was attempting to make his own book sound less weak, IMO. I say this lawsuit has no merit.

[gryff_slytherin]

I hope so too! =)

[margotlefaye]

Devil's advocate...since the bankrupted author died in 1997, the year the first HP book was published, he may never have heard of either JKR or HP. Clearly, he's not trying to do anything for money...or any other reason. The son did not wait eight years to make a claim. He first raised the issue, publicly, five years ago. We don't know what he was doing, privately, before that. Or how much grief, rather than greed, plays into things. There may well be similarities the son genuinely believes make a strong case for plagiarism.

But even if Willy the Wizard went to wizard college on a train and had adventures, that hardly makes a case for plagiarism. Otherwise, Glen Cook, author of the Garett, PI series that began in the 1980's would be suing the pants off of Jim Butcher for the latter's Dresden Files. (Instead, Glen wrote a very nice blurb for Jim to use in his publicity.)

So, yeah, unlikely. We'll probably find out more as the case either progresses or is laughed out of court.

[gryff_slytherin]

I didn't realize he raised the issue five years ago. But what I'm curious about is why he didn't immediately sue and is only now bringing in a lawsuit...

But, yeah, we'll probably see the circumstances and what happens when the lawsuit progresses forward. =)

[firefox1490]

I actually remember hearing about this a while ago. I guess it was five years ago like margotlefaye said.

Personally I didn't think it would get far then and now I doubt it will get far. Most likely it'll be settled out of court and end up being a blurb in the back of a book about the history of HP.

[gryff_slytherin]

Let's hope so! =)

[dracos_damsel]

Guh!