Harry Potter triumphs as plot-copying claim struck out

Published on Monday 18 July 2011 17:44

A CLAIM that Harry Potter author JK Rowling lifted the plot of one of her books from the work of another writer has been struck out after the claimant failed to meet a deadline for paying the first stage of £1.5 million into court as security for costs.

The Court of Appeal in London ordered last week that the claimant, Paul Allen, trustee of the estate of Adrian Jacobs, who died in 1997, should pay the first section of the money into court by 4pm on Friday last week, or the case would be struck out.

The claim has now failed, as no payment was made.

The move marks the end of a bitterly fought battle in which Ms Rowling was accused of having lifted the plot of fourth in the series - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - from Mr Jacobs' book, Willy the Wizard. She and her publisher, Bloomsbury, had faced a demand for more than a billion Australian dollars - 659m - in damages.

Solicitor David Hooper, a partner with law firm Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, which represented Bloomsbury, said: "They have not paid the money into court. The whole thing is a scandal - it has been going on for seven years. It was an absolutely ludicrous case." The claimants had spent well over 1m, he said.

Ms Rowling has described the claim that her book was copied from Willy the Wizard as "not only unfounded but absurd", and said she had never even seen the book until Mr Allen's claim was launched in 2004.

Her solicitor, Gideon Benaim, a partner at law firm Schillings, said: "An enormous amount of time has been wasted having to defend against this claim, when it was quite obvious to us from the outset that it had no chance of success.

"As the judge noted, those behind the claim set about publicising the case with a view to exerting pressure and promoting their 'book'. Quite how they ever thought that we would succumb to pressure indicates a complete lack of understanding on their part. We are glad that the substantive action is now at an end."

Mr Justice Kitchin ordered the payment into court in March, saying Mr Allen should pay security for 65 per cent of the costs faced by Ms Rowling and her publisher, Bloomsbury.

There were to be three staged payments - the first, for 322.691 for Bloomsbury's costs and 571,613 for Ms Rowling's costs to be made by 21 April, the second, 24,650 for Bloomsbury and 178,441 for Ms Rowling by 5 August, and the final payments, of 129,373 for Bloomsbury and 318,975 for Ms Rowling, to be made by 11 November.

The Court of Appeal rejected the appeal against that decision on Thursday last week, saying the first payment should be made by 4pm Friday or the case would be struck out.The same claim had already been rejected in the United States, where a judge in a New York court had said that "the contrast between the total concept and feel of the works is so stark that any serious comparison strains credulity".

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was 734 pages long, while the Willy the Wizard book consisted of just 16 pages of text, the judge said, adding that Willy the Wizard was "entirely devoid of a moral message or intellectual depth", in contrast to Goblet of Fire, which had "a highly developed moral core".