Rowling goes to NY court to block book

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Harry Potter author JK Rowling is expected to testify in a New York court on Monday in a bid to stop the publication of a fan’s unofficial encyclopedic companion to the boy wizard series.

Steve Vander Ark has written “The Harry Potter Lexicon,” a 400-page reference book based on his popular fan Web site (www.hp-lexicon.org). Rowling and Warner Bros. are suing RDR Books, which planned to publish the volume last November.

In a declaration filed in the US District Court in February, Rowling, 42, who wrote the seven hugely successful Harry Potter novels, said she was “very frustrated that a former fan has tried to co-opt my work for financial gain.”

The author said she would be exploited by the publication of the book she said constituted a “rip-off.”

“I feel intensely protective, firstly, of the literary world I spent so long creating, and secondly, of the fans who bought my books in such large numbers,” the British writer said.

The lawsuit filed in October names RDR Books, an independent Michigan-based publisher, and unidentified persons as defendants. It seeks to stop publication and requests damages for copyright and federal trademark infringement and any profits to be gained.

Warner Bros. is a unit of Time Warner Inc, which owns the copyright and trademark rights to the Potter books.

Rowling has said she plans to write her own Harry Potter encyclopedia, which would include material that did not make it into the novels, and donate the proceeds to charity. The novels have sold more than 400 million copies.

RDR Books has said Vander Ark, a librarian, had spoken at Harry Potter academic conferences in Britain, Canada and the United States and that a timeline he created was used by Warner Bros. in DVD releases of the Harry Potter films.