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Rowling arrives for Potter case Rowling testifies in Potter case
(about 4 hours later)
Author JK Rowling has arrived at a New York court to testify over plans to publish an unofficial Harry Potter encyclopaedia. JK Rowling has told a New York court that plans to publish an unofficial Harry Potter encyclopaedia amounted to "wholesale theft".
The contested guidebook, Harry Potter Lexicon, is based on material from an internet fan site of the same name. She said she had stopped work on a new novel because her legal concerns had "decimated my creative work".
Rowling claims the book violates her intellectual property rights. "I really don't want to cry," she said as she gave evidence in her copyright infringement case against writer Steve Vander Ark and his publisher RDR Books.
The author is suing writer Steve Vander Ark and his publisher RDR Books and the case is scheduled to last for most of the week. The case is expected to last most of the week.
In court papers filed before the trial, the author said she was "deeply troubled" by plans to turn the Lexicon website into a book. Ms Rowling, who denied the case was about money, accused Mr Vander Ark, a librarian, of "an act of betrayal" in using her fiction as the basis for his guide.
RDR's book constitutes a Harry Potter rip-off of the type I have spent years trying to prevent JK Rowling He has simply taken it and copied it - it is sloppy, lazy and it takes my work wholesale JK Rowling
"He has simply taken it and copied it," Rowling told the Manhattan courtroom. "It is sloppy, lazy and it takes my work wholesale."
The author said she is not sure is she now has "the will or the heart" to write her own definitive encyclopaedia, the proceeds of which she had intended to donate to charity.
Earlier, Ms Rowling's lawyer said RDR Books, based in Michigan, was trying to scoop her plan to publish her own guide to the Harry Potter universe.
Dale Cendali told US District Court Judge Robert P Patterson that RDR Books had copied Ms Rowling's "life work" and put them in a book bearing "the name of somebody else".
The Harry Potter Lexicon is based on material from an internet fan site of the same name.
'A Harry Potter rip-off'
Ms Rowling, who claims the book violates her intellectual property rights, brought her legal case against Mr Vander Ark and his publisher last year.
In court papers filed before the trial, the author said she was "deeply troubled" by plans to turn the website into a book.
"RDR's book constitutes a Harry Potter rip-off of the type I have spent years trying to prevent," she said."RDR's book constitutes a Harry Potter rip-off of the type I have spent years trying to prevent," she said.
The author has said she plans to write her own definitive Harry Potter encyclopaedia, including material that did not make it into the seven novels.
"If RDR's position is accepted, it will undoubtedly have a significant, negative impact on the freedoms enjoyed by genuine fans on the internet," she said."If RDR's position is accepted, it will undoubtedly have a significant, negative impact on the freedoms enjoyed by genuine fans on the internet," she said.
Literary warning RDR Books has accused Ms Rowling of seeking to "claim a monopoly on the right to publish literary reference guides, and other non-academic research, relating to her own fiction".
RDR Books said Rowling was seeking to "claim a monopoly on the right to publish literary reference guides, and other non-academic research, relating to her own fiction".
If accepted, it said, her injunction "would dramatically extend the reach of copyright protection and eliminate an entire genre of literary supplements - third party reference guides to fiction".If accepted, it said, her injunction "would dramatically extend the reach of copyright protection and eliminate an entire genre of literary supplements - third party reference guides to fiction".
"By extension, it would threaten not just reference guides, but encyclopaedias, glossaries, indexes and other tools that provide useful information about copyrighted works." The case continues.
The case will be heard by Judge Robert P Patterson without a jury at US District Court in Manhattan.