Taking a Page Too Many From Harry Potter

It's a fair bet that Steven Jan Vander Ark, a devoted Harry Potter fan now permanently enjoined from publishing his life's work ---- a Lexicon of all creations, great and small, in the J.K. Rowling series ---- was not such a great crafter of term papers back in grade school.

We all remember the drill: A paper of X pages in length is assigned, on. let's say, the French Revolution or the Peloponnesian Wars. All decamp to library shelves to find the Encyclopedia Britannica, whereupon some students cut and paste passages in bulk without a tweak, while others practice a more punctuated and selective form of copying.

Vander Ark is not such a great term-paper writer, according to a 75-page decision issued on Monday afternoon by Judge David Patterson of the Federal District Court in Manhattan.

The frustrating thing for Vander Ark is that he did not exactly flunk: He and his legal team never disputed that Rowling owned the copyright to her works, but argued that the Lexicon was "fair use" under copyright law --- meaning that the new work, while lifted from the original, according to the legal precedents, "adds something new." If judges were hip, they would call it a "meta" kind of thing.

On this score, Judge Patterson did not fail Vander Ark. In fact, Vander Ark's goal could have earned him an A. "The purpose of the Lexicon is transformative," Patterson wrote. First off, he declared this potential copyright infringement in the "narrow genre of nonfiction guides to fiction works."

"Presumably, Rowling created the Harry Potter series for the expressive purpose of telling an entertaining and thought provoking story centered on the character Harry Potter set in a magical world The Lexicon, on the other hand, uses material from the series for the practical purpose of making information about the intricate world of Harry Potter readily accessible to readers as a reference guide."

But Vander Ark fell down in his execution. Patterson's opinion reveals early on that he simply does not like what the author has produced. The judge compares Vander Ark's work with the two published pieces he thinks are most like his own: "The Companion to Narnia, however, is far more erudite and informative than the Lexicon," he wrote.

Ouch! Does this sound familiar from grade school?

There have been others to provide a glossary to the working of Harry Potter's world, and in footnote 18, Judge Patterson also gives a poor grade to that effort. He deigns that a work by one George W. Beahm, called, Fact, Fiction and Folklore in Harry Potter's World: An Unofficial Guide, a sloppy job, one that "does not provide citations or the sources of its information and is less comprehensive than the Lexicon." Beahm's book somehow flew under Rowling's radar, without being blocked from publication. Then again, he did not have an immensely popular Website --- the fodder for Vander Ark's book.

At trial, a teary-eyed Rowling compared Vander Ark's taking of her work to the plundering of the "plums" in her "cake." Ah, the English: They fancy their pudding.

Rowling herself, at the trial, acknowledged stealing away to coffee shops to fact-check her own work using the Vander Ark's Website, and the director of a Harry Potter movie did the same.

So, what, in the end, earned Vander Ark his flunking score? Well it was both quantity and quality.

As for quantity, Vander Ark culled 450 manuscript pages from 4,100 in the actual Rowling series. That doesn't seem like a huge mass, but then again, the judge focused on his rife stealing of words from Rowling's own guides to her novels, Fantastic Beast and Quidditch Through the Ages.

The judge basically can't stand this sort of totem-poll copyright infringement. (By the way, totem pole hearsay is a term of the legal jargon, for those obsessed.)

And in any case, the judge is not interested in quantity, but quality. And on this score, Vander Art simply falls down, for he has taken too many exact words from his hero --- despite his "transformational" goal of creating the go-to reference bible for All Things Potter. The judge, for one, is fixated on Vander Ark's description imagery such as mirrors --- objects of everyday life for which he uses words stolen from Rowley, even though they have nothing to do with a made-up character, such as Quidditch.

For example: "A magnificent mirror, high as a classroom ceiling, with an ornate frame standing on two clawed feet," comes from Rowling's original, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Vander Art's Lexicon replicates that language.

Toward the end of his analysis, Judge Patterson acknowledgs that "determining how much copying and fictional elements" from the original book series would be necessary to make for a copyright violation "presents a difficult task."

Patterson answered that task, however reluctantly, in the affirmative.

I asked for a reaction from one young Potter fan: Julia C. Pelletier of Milton, Mass., the 11-year-old daughter of my best friend from law school, whom I just happen to know has just finished reading the entire Rowling series for the SECOND time. Over the Labor Day weekend.

"I think she should have won," Pelletier said of the outcome. "It took her all that time to imagine those characters and things," she said, "She put so many years into it, it would be unfair if someone else just stole it."

All very nice. But here is where young Julia waxed for the ages: "Because she explains every word in the book, there really would not be any need for a glossary or dictionary" Julia said of Rowling's words. Vander Ark, fan that he is of the Rowling series, would most probably agree.

Karen Donovan