The Battle with Willy the Wizard Continues
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JK Rowling will be unhappy with a recent refusal of the English High Court to grant summary judgment on a copyright infringement claim made against her and her publishers.
The copyright claim is made by the trustee for the estate of Adrian Jacobs, the author of a book called Willy the Wizard (WTW). It is claimed that JK Rowling read WTW before writing any of the Harry Potter books and that aspects of the plot, sub-plots, themes and incidents in WTW were copied into the fourth book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In an attempt to get the infringement claim thrown out, JK Rowling and her publishers applied for summary judgment on the basis that the claim had no real prospect of success. It was argued that JK Rowling had never heard of WTW before writing the Harry Potter books and that any similarities between the books had arisen by chance. Kitchin J decided however that there was some prospect of the infringement claim succeeding at trial, and he dismissed the application.
Although JK Rowling and her publishers are now faced with the preparation of a full trial, they will no doubt be consoled by the opinion expressed by Kitchin J that it is improbable that the claim will succeed. It may also be a source of consolation that in his decision, Kitchin J closely followed the approach of the Court of Appeal in a previous, unsuccessful infringement claim against Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code (see Baigent v Random House Group Ltd [2007] EWCA Civ 247).
For the full decision of Kitchin J click here.
