Scholastic; AP Photo/ Louis LanzanoIt's been a great week for J.K. Rowling.
First the film version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 scores the largest debut in Hollywood history, with $168 million at the box office over the weekend.
Now the author has some steller news about a lawsuit accusing her of stealing the idea for one of her Potter plots.
According to Reuters, the estate of the late writer Adrian Jacobs failed to come up with a first installment of $1.3 million towards a $2.6 million security deposit that a London High Court judge ordered to cover the costs of the case should it ever go to trial.
"The case is dead for now," Max Markson, a spokesman for the estate, told the wire service.
He was quick to add, however: "Can it be revived? Yes, it could be taken up in another country, another jurisdiction."
Jacobs' heirs (he died in 1997) have already struck out once before. They filed a similar plagiarism complaint in the U.S. that was tossed by a federal judge in January.
While Jacobs' estate accused Rowling of essentially stealing "substantial parts" of his 1987 book The Adventures of Willy the Wizard—No. 1 Livid Land and repurposing it for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the U.S. district judge presiding over the case proclaimed the allegations "hopeless and speculative." Rowling herself has sworn she hadn't even heard of Willy the Wizard before this mess, and that the central conceit of a competition among wizards is neither new nor copyrightable.
Rowling appears glad the legal action is behind her.
"We are glad that the substantive action is now at an end," her U.K. law firm, Schillings, said in a statement.