Rowling Vindicated

J.K. Rowling owns "muggles" and whatnot:

A federal court on Wednesday threw out author Nancy Stouffer's claims that Rowling, the author of the blockbuster Harry Potter ( news - web sites) books, stole words and characters from Stouffer's books. The claims were made against Rowling and her U.S. publisher and movie producer.

Partly at issue was ownership of the trademark and copyrights to "muggles." In Rowling's books, "muggles" is the name wizards give to humans who have no magical abilities. Stouffer had used the term to describe mythical characters in her books for children.

But the U.S. District Court for southern New York found not only that Rowling did not pilfer the muggles, but also that Stouffer had lied to the court and doctored evidence to support her claims. The court fined Stouffer $50,000 for this "pattern of intentional bad faith conduct."

Yet another disingenuous assault on a deep-pockets target.

Article Author: Eric Olsen

Career media professional Eric Olsen is honored to be the founder and former publisher of Blogcritics.org, and former publisher of Technorati.com, which both rule. He is now editor, co-founder, and CEO of The Morton Report.

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