‘Harry Potter’ Writer JK Rowling Sued For Plagiarism
June 17, 2009
UK (ChattahBox) – JK Rowling, the creator and writer of the Harry Potter franchise, is being sued by the estate of a deceased writer, who claims she stole the idea behind her books from his own.
The family of Adrian Jacobs has filed a civil suit in London, in a claim that was originally brought up in 2004. At the time Jacob’s attorneys claimed that ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ was plagiarized from his book, ‘The Adventures Of Willy The Wizard No 1: Livid Land’.
The book was published through a small company after being rejected in the mid 1980’s by the same publishers that gave Rowling her start. It is Jacob’s son and grandson who are now seeking $50 million dollars for what they claim are stolen portions of Willy The Wizard.
Among the claims of plagiarism are a boy wizard who competes in a content, a wizard prison existing, a two hostages taken by someone having to be rescued from a bathroom (such as in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets), and a wizard train.
“Willy the Wizard is a very insubstantial booklet running to 36 pages which had very limited distribution,” a statement released by a spokesperson for Bloomsbury was quoted in The Daily Mail.
“The central character of Willy the Wizard is not a young wizard and the book does not revolve around a wizard school. This claim was first made in 2004 by solicitors in London acting on behalf of Adrian Jacobs’ son who was the representative of his father’s estate and who lives in the United States.
“The claim was unable to identify any text in the Harry Potter books which was said to copy Willy the Wizard. This claim is without merit and will be defended vigorously.”
This is the second lawsuit for plagiarism faced by JK Rowling, after an American writer in 2002 claimed that she stole the idea for her books from ‘The Legend of Rah and the Muggles’. In that case, writer Nancy Stouffer was found to have altered evidence to further her case, and was ordered to pay a fine of $30,000, as well as a portion of Rowling’s court costs.
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12 Responses to “‘Harry Potter’ Writer JK Rowling Sued For Plagiarism”
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The writer who wrote that first book was Nancy Stouffer, Barbara Marcus was the President of Scholastic condemned Stouffer. You should probably change that.
Thank you for catching that. The change has been made.
I don’t believe JK Rowling has done anything to do with copying anyone’s ideas! They have been derived from her own imagination and experiences and if that can’t be accepted well boo-hoo. Harry Potter is and always will be a phenomenonal success and no one will be able to withdraw JK Rowling’s rightful title to this spectacular series in which she wrote and, wrote alone.
a ha ha…
too bad for the person who failed at sueing jk rowling..
imagine writing on scraps of paper when you’re really poor….
yeah… thats how it got started….
you’ve got to know…..
and those people tring to sue her….
are so
stupid for trying to get away with that
I hope she looses the new court case. It’s obvious that it’s stolen as the woman has no writing talent, her other books have failed miserbly, and the only reason Harry Potter became so popular is good marketing.
The women deserves nothing in my books. I do not believe that for one second that she had no prior knowledge of these books.
Just face it JK, you’ve been found out and it’s time to face the music and let down the people who read your terrible books.
Robert - Did you not read the story? Because if you had you would have seen that there were little similarities between the massive 7 book series, and the 36 page Willy the Wizard book.
Fan or not, the people suing are once again out for money, and money alone. They are con artists.
Robert– “her other books have failed miserably” Other books? She hasn’t had anything besides Harry Potter and books relating to Harry Potter published.
I’m not going to say that she’s the best technical writer. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t come up with the ideas for Harry Potter on her own. The claims are ridiculous. I mean, if people are going to sue for every similarity between books, then the Tolkien estate would make a fortune every time someone wrote an elf that was good at archery. Coming up with a wizard train or a wizard competition is not a unique talent. Now if Wally the Wizard had a moon-shaped scar on his forehead, went to a wizard school called Pigzits, had two friends named Robert and Henrietta and was fighting evil Lord Moldywort, then there would be substantial evidence for a reasonable claim.
Oh, for crying out loud.
Once you make millions of dollars on your creativity, people will come out of the woodwork claiming that the “the” in your story is the same as the “the” in their story.
Megan, you’ve said it perfectly.
You people have no idea how much she ‘Borrowed’. It needs to be explained again. If you have 10 million dollars and you hire the TOP LAWYERS in the country you too can steal other peoples work and coutner sue them every time and win. Its the poor person who loses a court battle.
Now on to the evidence. J K (the bitch) borrowed without permission the lightning symbol, the colors, the wizard school, most of the names and even jargon. Go look it up and get a life.
TG
This must be the silliest lawsuit of all time. Even the lawyer’s description of the similarities between the two books seems awfully thin. There is nothing that couldn’t just be a coincidence and there seems to be a great deal of difference in the nature and scope of the books. Does “Moby Dick” plagarize the Bible because they both have a whale and a guy named Ahab? These people are just hoping she will pay them a little something until they go away.
L. Grey http://www.greyorgray.com
you know, some people are really really stupid. Jk has loads of talent, andis incredibly creative. Thanks to her, children acctually wanted to read.
Personally, if any one should be getting sued, its that dumbass christopher paloni. Its like a complete copy of LOTR. Who ever is tolkein’s descedants should be doing some thing about that witless failure. But then their too mature (unliethe retards trying to sue Joanne Rowling)