16 October,2010 07:58 AM IST | | Agencies
Rowling in court to have allegedly copied ideas for Goblet of fire from Novella of children's book writer
Harry Potter author JK Rowling may have to defend herself at England's High Court against an allegation of copying her ideas from an earlier obscure children's book writer.
Justice David Kitchin ruled that the claim by the estate of the late Adrian Jacobs had a chance of success but this was "improbable".
The judge refused applications by Rowling for an immediate judgment dismissing the case as having no chance of success.
But Justice Kitchin ordered that Paul Allen, the estate's trustee, pay money into court as security for the costs of the case if it went to trial.
Jacobs wrote what the judge described as a "16-page novella" entitled Willy the Wizard and Allen claims Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire infringed the copyright.
Rowlingu00a0 says the books are not similar except at the most generalised level.
The Potter author said she had never heard of Willy the Wizard or Jacobs before the publication of the Goblet book.
Allen is claiming that there is substantial evidence to show that Rowling's claims of not having access to Jacob's book before she wrote Goblet are untrue, the judge said.
Rowling has described the claim as "not only unfounded but absurd".
Little described Willy the Wizard to the judge as "an appalling book" and that Jacobs had never given him a copy.
The judge said he found Rowling's evidence "very powerful".
Both Rowling and her publisher had told the judge that behind Allen's allegation "lies a consortium seeking to use this claim to extort a settlement from the defendants and sell more copies of Willy the Wizard on the back of the publicity it generates."
Controversy
Willy the Wizard written by Adrian Jacobs was published in 1987. A year later Jacobs was declared bankrupt and died in 1997.
Paul Allen claims that in 1987, Christopher Little, who became Rowling's literary agent some eight years later, was given copies of Jacobs's book and that he gave one to Rowling before she wrote Goblet or any of the Harry Potter books.
