On the face of it, the case that was heard in Court 24A of the U.S.District Court in Manhattan promised to be a dry affair: a dispute over copyright between an author, and a publisher wanting to print an A to Z of her work. But things got interesting when the author, Joanne Rowling, admitted from the witness stand that she was holding back her tears. "I really don't want to cry," she said, "because I'm British."
She may have sold millions of books and amassed a fortune that makes her a dollar billionaire (she is now worth GBP.545 million), but when it came to giving legal evidence for the first time in her life, even Ms.Rowling found the experience humbling.
Amid the sombre wood panelling - shades of Hogwarts there - and under the eagle of American justice, she poured her heart out about her debt to the characters she created. Ms.Rowling had flown in from Scotland to appear in person in a case in which she and Warner Bros, the studio behind the film adaptations of her Harry Potter books, are seeking to block the publication of an unauthorised encyclopaedia to the series. the defendant is a small publisher from Michigan, RDR Books, which wants to print the Lexicon, a 400-page Harry Potter guide to be priced at $.24.95.
The Publisher's lawyer praised the creative powers of Ms.Rowling but told the court that she was seeking to wield a different kind of power to "make the Lexicon disappear in our real world."
She may have sold millions of books and amassed a fortune that makes her a dollar billionaire (she is now worth GBP.545 million), but when it came to giving legal evidence for the first time in her life, even Ms.Rowling found the experience humbling.
Amid the sombre wood panelling - shades of Hogwarts there - and under the eagle of American justice, she poured her heart out about her debt to the characters she created. Ms.Rowling had flown in from Scotland to appear in person in a case in which she and Warner Bros, the studio behind the film adaptations of her Harry Potter books, are seeking to block the publication of an unauthorised encyclopaedia to the series. the defendant is a small publisher from Michigan, RDR Books, which wants to print the Lexicon, a 400-page Harry Potter guide to be priced at $.24.95.
The Publisher's lawyer praised the creative powers of Ms.Rowling but told the court that she was seeking to wield a different kind of power to "make the Lexicon disappear in our real world."
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