Warner Bros. and J. K. Rowling Vs. RDR Books - Trial

Trial

The trial began on 14 April 2008 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, with Rowling testifying on day one and Vander Ark testifying on day two. During her testimony, Rowling reiterated her claim that the Lexicon contained minimal commentary and merely recycled her writing, adding nothing other than "facetious asides and etymologies of the easiest kind." Rowling referred to the Lexicon as "wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work", and criticized it as "sloppy" and characterized by "very little research". In sometimes emotional testimony, Rowling recalled beginning the Potter books when she was an impoverished 25-year-old single mother, nearly coming to tears when saying, "These characters continue to mean so much to me over a long period of time. The closest you could come is to say, 'How do you feel about your children?'" Rowling also revealed that the lawsuit has "decimated her creative work" over the prior month, causing her to cease work on a new novel. In his testimony, Vander Ark said that he too had had reserves about publishing the encyclopedia and that the publishing company had talked him into it. "It's been difficult because there has been a lot of criticism, obviously, and that was never the intention. ... This has been an important part of my life for the last nine years or so," he said.

Wary of the consequences of a legal ruling, the presiding judge, Robert P. Patterson, Jr., urged the parties to settle, saying, "I’m concerned that this case is more lawyer-driven than it is client-driven. The fair use people are on one side, and a large company is on the other side. . . . The parties ought to see if there’s not a way to work this out, because there are strong issues in this case and it could come out one way or the other. The fair use doctrine is not clear."

The plaintiffs made their closing remarks on the third day of the trial. Rowling claimed that "This case is about an author's right to protect their creation. If this book is allowed to be published the floodgates will open. Are we, or are we not, the owners of our own work? It's not just my work that is endangered." In addition, she claimed that the Lexicon was "sloppy, lazy" and "filled with errors," though RDR Books lawyer Anthony Falzone noted that "Copyright law does not permit an author to suppress a book because she doesn't like it."

On day three, the two sides reached a limited settlement involving the use of any Rowling endorsements on the book. It was agreed that, should it be published, neither her name nor her previous endorsement of the website would be used to promote it.

Each side employed a literary expert to testify whether or not the Lexicon had copied text without attribution. RDR hired a literature professor from the University of California, Berkeley, who cited reference guides to The Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia as precedents to the Lexicon's book. David Hammer, lawyer for RDR, claimed that the need for a reference guide was greatest when the work being discussed is most creative, and fantasy is presumably the most creative form of literature.

Ms. Jeri Johnson, senior tutor in English at Exeter College, Oxford, spoke as an expert witness in literature for the plaintiffs, decrying Vander Ark's work as unscholarly, and claiming that there was enough material in Rowling's world for serious academic analysis. Rowling's lawyers said that, unlike those guides, the Lexicon consists largely of information taken from the books and contains little interpretation or analysis. RDR's lawyers agreed, but said that such guides can provide other benefits for the reader than analysis.

During the trial, Rowling said on the stand, "I never ever once wanted to stop Mr. Vander Ark from doing his own guide, never ever. Do your book, but, please, change it so it does not take as much of my work." However, in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, RDR Books' publisher, Roger Rappaport, said, "That opportunity was never presented to us. The only thing they said was: 'Will you stop the book?'"