J.K. Rowling Lawsuit Continues After Neglecting To Show Manuscripts

Posted Thursday, June 2nd, 2011 02:04 pm GMT -4 by 0

J.K. Rowling is apparently still facing legal woes.  The Trustee of the Estate of late English author Adrian Jacobs announced he has now met the order of the English Court of Appeal, paying 50,000 sterling into court, enabling the appeal and ‘Adventures of Willy The Wizard’ copyright breach lawsuit against J.K. Rowling and her publishers Bloomsbury to go ahead.

The full trial is scheduled for February 2012.

In October 2010 the High Court rejected J.K. Rowling’s application to strike out the case against her. The High Court was concerned that despite requests, J.K. Rowling had refused to disclose her original manuscripts and notebooks, which she claimed showed the genesis of Harry Potter.
The Court held that until she disclosed her manuscripts, the Estate could not evaluate the strength of the case against her. Rather than disclosing documents, J.K. Rowling’s lawyers obtained a court order requiring the Estate to pay the author and her publishers over 1.4 million sterling as security.

In April The Trustee appealed, arguing that this vast sum would “stifle” the lawsuit. “Why has J.K. Rowling persistently refused to produce her first Harry Potter manuscripts and famous crammed notebooks?” asks Mr. Allen. “Her lawyers even claimed they no longer exist, and ignored a court deadline to exchange a list of documents. We have been asking J.K. Rowling for sight of these crucial documents for many years.” The case alleges that J.K. Rowling used Adrian Jacobs’ visionary 1987 work “The Adventures of Willy the Wizard” to develop her Harry Potter series, copying many new expressions of ideas from Jacobs’ work, including Wizard Chess, Wizard Trains & Hospitals, Wizard Gambling and Newspapers and copied Jacobs’ 1987 storyline concept “The year of wizard contests” when writing Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire published in 2000.

The dispute casts doubt on J.K. Rowling’s account of creating Harry Potter on a train. Her literary agent Chris Little claims the first draft chapters of Harry Potter came from J.K. Rowling in 1995 but the Estate maintains the manuscript was in his hands at least a year earlier in 1994.
The Estate claims that Little was also Jacobs literary agent.

In July 2011 The Trustee will also ask the Court of Appeal to order the return of costs spent by the Estate successfully contesting J.K Rowling’s failed attempt to strike out the case.

Paul Allen says: “We welcome the opportunity to prove our case at trial next February and exposing the inconsistencies in the account of how J.K Rowling came to write the Harry Potter books.”

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  • Meditativemonkey

    No one complained when Shakespeare rewrote classic stories to fit modern audiences. Why is this different?

    • http://twitter.com/dragonzmyst Christine Donatello

      Very good point.

    • Anonymous

      Good point but the laws are different now. If true, she’s not “paying homage” to a tale if she’s hiding it

  • Beibers

    laws are much different today than during Shakespeare’s time. if she did copy stuff from the other concept (sounds possible with alleged help from the literary agent) then this is huge because the books & movies made billions of dollars, especially with the last film coming up looking to break a few records.

    • http://twitter.com/cmdonatello Christine Donatello

      True!  We’ll have to see how this plays out.  Hopefully they can get to the truth of the matter so this can be resolved once and for all.

  • Rebecca

    who cares if she stole ideas very few if she did from that article becase she still wrote it all and its still amazing AND it was her storyline

  • HarryPotterIsEpic

    This stupid Jacobs person should get a life, he is just jealous because she wrote an amazing set of books. Nobody liked his book s so he is taking it out on her; LEAVE HARRY POTTER ALONE IT IS EPIC! GO JK ROWLING WE ARE ALL BEHIND YOU! BOO JACOBS!

  • guest

    who would do a thinig like that they’er ruining the whole thing!  they have no life and are shallow jerks

  • Potterheads support Rowling

    So she used the word “wizard” in front of commonly used words…that does not mean she deserves this! She has more fans than this Jacob person who needs to drop the lawsuit… Rowling has more than one country on her side, she has millions of fans from children to elders.  This will never work out for Jacobs. JK Rowling however has my full support during this and the support of loyal fans world wide. J.K. Rowling is not to be messed with and ” the year of wizard contests” –  JK Rowling didn’t do wizard Contests she did a contest with three different parts. Now unless these people want a full uprising on their hands they need to back of from the lady who gave millions of fans their childhood. J.K Rowling – ‘Always’ supported & Loved. Thanks
                                       sent from someone who cares about other people and one famously talented author,
                                                                                                                               Melissa J. Heintzelman

  • Underdog

    Hope she looses everything. Most likey the idea was her agent’s, who hied Rowling to write it. He gets 10-15 percent of everything she makes. He was Jacob’s agent and they have proved he had the Willy manuscript in1994. Really, everybody should be suing Rowling. Wizard’s Hall, The Worst Witch, Books of Magic. Look them up, Rowling ripped off sll of these. Blatantly. Every writer knows you read your market before you started writing. Rowling has admitted to never reading any pf the dozens of books she has stloen from, all of which were famous. So we’re supposed to believe she devided to write children’s genre fiction without EVER reading any other contemporary children’s fantasy? No way. She made millions plagiarizing other’s works. Hope she and her agent get what’s coming to them.

  • Neo

    I don’t know about this Jacob’s book, but I’ve read Anthony Horowitz’s “Groosham Grange” and I assure you Rowling got many ideas out of it. Groosham Grange is the name of a school of wizards. In that book a normal boy, who doesn’t know that he is a wizard, gets an unexpected invitation to enter this school on his birthday (as Harry), he travels to school by train and in the train he meets a girl and a boy and they become his best friends. After the train they get to the school by boat (yes, as Hogwats) because the school is in an island.  They have funny teachers: a worewolf, another teacher is dead….  And so on.

    I don’t remember everything as I read it years ago, but at the time I thought that Rowling copied several ideas of this book, that’s sure. Being the main one, of course, the idea of a normal boy who one day goes to a wizard’s school because, even if he doesn’t know, he is a wizard, he has powers, and there are more people like him in this world.
    This said, Horowitz’s book in not half as interesting or good as Philosopher’s stone, but that’s not the point.

    The point is that Rowling, and her expensive lawyers, sued anybody who dared to write any book remotely related to wizard boys, because she considered they were stealing HER ideas, and … her money (apparently rich people like Rowling never have enough).

    In my opinion, she doesn’t deserve that Mr. Horowitz, a very talented man and a true  gentleman, didn’t sue HER. Groosham Grange is a british book, but was translated into French under the title L’ile du Crane, and got a prize for children’s books in France in 1993. I think Rowling published her Potter book in 1998. 

  • Lexicaholic

    You know, it is entirely possible for authors to come up with similar ideas without ever reading each other’s works. It isn’t copying unless you can show that something was actually copied – and an unpopular book with a 5,000 print run decades ago in a world with over six billion people probably needs to do more than just show similarities to prove a copyright violation.