J.K. Rowling "Saddened" by Potter Plagiarism Claims

Estate of a British author sweeps the Harry Potter creator into ongoing legal dispute over Goblet of Fire

By Natalie Finn Feb 18, 2010 2:30 AMTags
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK RowlingScholastic; AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano

The heat has been turned up under Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

J.K Rowling has been tacked on as a defendant in a lawsuit filed against her U.K. publisher in 2004, which claims that the best-selling author plagiarized part of the fourth book in her über-successful Harry Potter series.

The suit alleges that, in writing Goblet of Fire, Rowling ripped off the 1987 children's book The Adventures of Willy the Wizard: No. 1 Livid Land by Adrian Jacobs, who died in 1997.

To which the embattled author says, "Hogwarts," er, "hogwash."

"I am saddened that yet another claim has been made that I have taken material from another source to write Harry," Rowling said in a statement released by her rep to Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

"The fact is I had never heard of the author or the book before the first accusation by those connected to the author's estate in 2004; I have certainly never read the book."

She continued: "The claims that are made are not only unfounded but absurd and I am disappointed that I, and my U.K. publisher Bloomsbury, are put in a position to have to defend ourselves."

Rowling says that counsel for her and Bloomsbury will move immediately for the case to be dismissed for lack of merit.

Jacobs' estate says it was the late author who came up with the idea of wizard prisons, hospitals and schools, long before Harry's lightning-bolt scar was a glimmer in Rowling's eye.

Also mentioned in the suit is that Jacobs and Rowling shared the same literary agent, Christopher Little.

Bloomsbury has denied all accusations of plagiarism on Rowling's part.

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