The copyright lawsuit between JK Rowling and The Harry Potter Lexicon finished yesterday, but don’t think you can go back to not giving a stuff about it again.

As you remember, JK Rowling claims that The Harry Potter Lexicon unfairly and illegally plagiarises the Harry Potter novels, while the makers of The Harry Potter Lexicon just claim that it’s nothing more than a reference book. And now the case has concluded.

However, we won’t know if JK Rowling or The Harry Potter Lexicon author Steven Vander Ark will win yet, because the judge needs to go away and think about it. And he won’t do that until both JK Rowling and Steven Vander Ark have submitted written summations of their arguments to him. We’re just guessing here, but we’d assume that Vander Ark’s summation is going to be identical to Rowling’s, but with a couple of words changed and cheaper-looking artwork.

Chances are the copyright lawsuit between Harry Potter author JK Rowling and the makers of The Harry Potter Lexicon has had you on the edge of your seat, assuming that you really have nothing better to do than concern yourself with a petty legal squabble between an obscenely rich woman and the makers of a trashy cash-in book that you wouldn’t have even known existed otherwise. If that’s you, then consider this your Super Bowl.

So, to quickly get everyone up to speed, this is what happened. David Vander Ark ran a Harry Potter fan website that JK Rowling gave an award to once. Then there were plans to turn the website into a book, which JK Rowling didn’t like the idea of because she was writing a similar Harry Potter reference book and she thought that Vander Ark’s book would step on its toes. JK Rowling sued David Vander Ark to stop publication of The Harry Potter Lexicon, saying that it amounted to theft. And that’s where we are today.

Well, almost. Yesterday was the final day of the court case in New York, and JK Rowling took to the stand once again to angrily declare that she’s being royally ripped off, as the New York Daily News reports:

Author JK Rowling Wednesday trashed the geeky librarian who’s trying to publish a Harry Potter encyclopedia as a literary thief who ripped off her novels. “If I may say so without being arrogant or vain,” Rowling [said], “I think there are funny things in there, and I wrote them.”… This time around, Rowling, wearing a crisp, white jacket, was testier, turning away from her lawyer to speak directly to Patterson as she urged him to defend authors like herself against plagiarists. “I did not fly here because I thought I would lose some sales,” Rowling said. “If this book is allowed to be published, the floodgates will open….I see this as an incredibly important case. Are we or are we not the owners of our own work?”

JK Rowling has a point. If she loses this case, then web nerds everywhere will be able to make their own hastily-compiled reference books – not just about Harry Potter, but about any rubbish, inexplicably popular series of kid’s books. It might be Harry Potter today, but tomorrow it’ll be Clifford The Big Red Dog. Is that something you want on your conscience? Is it?

Anyway, nobody’s going to know who’s come out on top of this case for a while, because the judge has requested that both JK Rowling and Steven Vander Ark hand in written summations of their arguments for him to peruse before coming to a conclusion. And if the Harry Potter books are anything to go by, JK Rowling’s summation is going to be about four billion pages long and full of about 18 pointless Quidditch matches. So don’t expect a result for a while.

Read more:

Harry Potter ‘Lexicon’ trial gets testier - New York Daily News

As if yesterday’s thrilling installment of That Court Case Where JK Rowling Gets Upset Because Someone Else Wrote A Harry Potter Book wasn’t enthralling enough, there’s more.

That’s because yesterday JK Rowling made it into court to speak about her outrage that a third-party Harry Potter reference book, The Lexicon Of Harry Potter, was being published without her say-so. “We all know I’ve made enough money.

hat’s absolutely not why I’m here,” JK Rowling told the courtroom. And that sounds fair – quite often the mega-wealthy lose the thrill of making money and replace it with a new interest.

It’s rare for a court case about a reference book to make a lot of headlines – we can only really think of the time that Britney Spears wrote her 1,200-page tome The Unbearable Lightness Of Being: The Knickerless Perspective back in 2006 – but that was before anyone tried writing a Harry Potter reference book.

As you’re probably quite sick of hearing now, JK Rowling has launched a lawsuit against publisher RDR Books because of its intent to publish The Harry Potter Lexicon, a third-party Harry Potter encyclopedia that will directly compete with JK Rowling’s own forthcoming Harry Potter encyclopedia.

JK Rowling’s court case started yesterday in New York, and it opened with a bang – JK Rowling herself took to the stand herself to defend against accusations that she just didn’t want to see anyone else make money from Harry Potter. And, to be fair, JK Rowling looked all wet-eyed and Princess Dianaish. Reuters reports:

When asked what Potter meant to her, the mother-of-three said: “I really don’t want to cry, because I am British … It’s like asking how do you feel about your child.” “This is very personal to me,” said Rowling, who wrote the first Potter book as a poverty-stricken single mother and is now estimated by The Sunday Times to be worth about $1 billion. “I am an author — 17-years of my work is being exploited here. This is not about money.”

And this lawsuit hasn’t just affected JK Rowling’s plans for her Harry Potter encyclopedia – she also claims that the stress of the court case has ‘decimated’ her creativity and has postponed her big Harry Potter follow-up book.

In fact, JK Rowling says that the book might not ever see the light of day now, thanks to the accompanying mental anguish of what she’s going through now.

Look, we’re all thinking the same thing here – let’s all go away and write a knocked-off Harry Potter book each.

By the time JK Rowling’s done suing all of us then she won’t have it in her to ever write another book again. And that’ll be one less person’s stupendous success to be bitterly jealous about, right?

Read more: Rowling tells court she’s stopped working – Reuters

Harry Potter has made JK Rowling richer than her wildest dreams – but if you try to make money out of Harry Potter, JK Rowling will crush you in her mighty fist.

Harry Potter fan Steven Vander Ark is slowly coming to realise this, because he's trying to publish a third-party Harry Potter reference book, Harry Potter Lexicon, and JK Rowling is doing her best to sue his balls off about it.

It just goes to show that JK Rowling won't allow any unauthorised Harry Potter merchandise to hit the shops. But, hey, that doesn't mean you have to tell her about that container of shoddy Far-Eastern lead-painted Dobby The House Elf choking aids that we've just had shipped into the country, OK?

You'd have thought that JK Rowling would have had enough of Harry Potter by now. Yes, admittedly the Harry Potter series has bought her global fame, an impossible level of wealth and the adoration of every literate child on the planet.

But, still, having to pretend to be grateful every time a waddling brat hands you a scrap of paper with a shitty crayon drawing of Ron Weasley when all you want to do is pick them up by their hair and throw them down the nearest well must be exhausting.

However, JK Rowling refuses to leave Harry Potter alone. Although the series of Harry Potter books may be over, JK Rowling still has the money from the next two – or maybe three – Harry Potter movies to come, plus whatever pennies she can wring out of the still rubbish-sounding Harry Potter theme park and the hopeless-sounding Harry Potter musical.

And yet, JK Rowling still plans to coin it in some more by cobbling together a Harry Potter encyclopedia that she can flog to the millions of kids who'd buy a dirty AIDS needle if it had the words 'Harry Potter' stamped on them.

Trouble is, it looks like another writer might beat JK Rowling to the punch. And JK Rowling is fuming about it, as the Associated Press reports:

In papers filed for a lawsuit in Manhattan, J.K. Rowling says she feels betrayed by a fan, Steven Vander Ark, for his role in trying to publish an unauthorized reference work, "Harry Potter Lexicon." Ark is editor of a Web site containing a fan-created collection of essays and encyclopedic material on the Potter universe, including lists of spells and potions found in the books, a catalog of magical creatures and a who's who in the wizarding world… "I am deeply troubled by the portrayal of my efforts to protect and preserve the copyrights I have been granted in the Harry Potter books," she wrote in court papers filed Wednesday in a lawsuit.

That's the main problem. In the past JK Rowling has been hugely supportive of the various Harry Potter fan-sites – and often uses them to communicate with her fans – but as soon as one of them tries to collate anything into something that stops JK Rowling from squeezing every last penny she can out of the speccy little wizard, she throws a shit-fit.

So who's right and who's wrong here? Is JK Rowling right to see Harry Potter Lexicon as a shameless cash-in designed to deflate her own pre-announced ideas? Or is Steven Vander Ark right to think that JK Rowling's being a terrible control freak who can't stand seeing other people happy? Or are we right to want to take every Happy Potter book, DVD or piece of merchandise ever made, throw it on a big fire and skip around it sort of like the Nazis did but this is OK because it's about Harry Potter?

Oh, we're right? There's a surprise.

Read more:

JK Rowling Bashes 'Harry Potter Lexicon' – Associated Press