Harry Potter Lexicon: still kicking.

From USA Today:

NEW YORK (AP) — 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.

Haven't there been, like, a bazillion other unauthorized companion guides to HP and his world?  Did WB and JKR try to block any of those?  Wasn't the website created by a whole ton of people?  Will they all get a cut of the proceeds, or at least a free copy? 

Intellectual property and moolah questions aside, does the world really need another HP guide?  Will anyone buy it?  (I am totally suffering from HP burnout, man.  And it's a good thing The Golden Compass comes out tomorrow, because I'm headed in a similar direction there.)

Comments

[Kate]

When the lawsuit was first announced I read some of the info....I'm afraid the HP Lexicon (or the publisher, really) is in the wrong (at least as I understand it): They are marketing it as a comprehensive HP encyclopedia (or they were) and it was for-profit, and JKR sent a letter to the guy (who she knows) saying "Hey, I really want to make sure we don't create confusion with the charity encyclopedia I'm going to do; do you mind letting us take a look at the book before it's released so we can smooth things out?" And then the publishing house alternated between ignoring the letters and sending "oh, we need more time" notes, which it turned out they were doing to stall so they could sue JKR and Warner Bros. for stealing the timeline on the Chamber of Secrets DVD, and.... UGH. Whatever, but I do think the whole thing has been bungled.

[Chrissy]

The HP Lexicon was created, far as I know, with JKR's permission as a not for profit website resource. They would need new permission to change the form of said info and to make money from it. JKR is perfectly within her rights as intellectual property owner to say, "No, I really want to write/publish my own version." It's a drag, but JKR and her publishers are in the right here. The HP Lexicon folks, who created an amazing web guide, really should understand this and quite honestly their publisher should know better.