Just caught the end of this on the news this morning. Anybody else hear about it? It would seem that, some ten years (1986, 1988) before the first Harry Potter hit the bookshelves, some author had published books for young children whose hero was Larry Potter (the story lines were entirely different). And, oddly enough, at least four of the characters in the more famous series bear the exact same name as their ‘predecessors’… Holy coincidence, Batman!
It would seem the author of the first series tried to obtain some financial compensation out-of-court with Rowlings and her publisher. Without success. Hence, the disclosure to the media.
IMHO, I’d say she’d have more than a fighting chance if this does go to court. And if I were a betting man, I’d say that it will never get there.
Rowlings is an arch-media-manipulator, and as such I’ve never really trusted her. (Plus she lives in Edinburgh, and you should see just how false and deceitful people are here (yeah, I know, Cretans and all that)). But, if she says that the fact that Harry… sorry, Larry and Lily Potter and Muggles and the Keeper of the Whatever are in both her “completely original” book and this book by someone who wasn’t terribly successful, saleswise, and couldn’t afford a really expensive lawyer like she could is complete coincidence, then I don’t think much can be done about it. Sorry about that last sentence, but it is parsable.
In the Rowlings book, Harry Potter is the son, and Lily Potter is the mother. In the Stouffer book, Larry and Lilly Potter are brother and sister. In Rowling’s book, Muggles are humans - non-magical, ordinary people. In the Stouffer book, Muggles are little mutated people.
The Infringement Chart on Stouffer’s appalling site (www.realmuggles.com) is amusing. Here are some examples of “infringement” listed on the site:
Both are children’s books
Both contain mythical places
Rowling has the sorcerer’s (or philosopher’s) stone; Stouffer has the worry stone
Rowling’s has a character called Neville; Stouffer has characters called Nevils.
Rowlings has a flying broom called a Nimbus 2000; Stouffer has a flying warrior called Nimbus.
Both books have a lake, a fleet of boats, visitors travelling on the boats, a castle on a cliff, a dark secret path, a wooden door that you knock three times on, a great hall, a receiving hall, seats in the great hall, characters in tights, vanishing steps, quill pens and parchment… the list goes on.
It’s stupid. So many books contain all of these elements. Now, if Stouffer’s book had characters called Hermione and Dumbledor, I’d give this claim a little more time. But Larry and Harry, Lilly and Lily, Potter and Potter… these names are so common it’s laughable. As for Muggles… I’ve seen lists of other places the word Muggle has been used over the years. It has no defined meaning, and a lot of people have “coined” it.
Stouffer has had the good fortune to find someone with talent that she can try and sue. The publicity is doing her no harm, because who ever heard of her books before Harry Potter came along?
Besides, who ever heard of someone ripping off the names, but changing the plot? If Rowlings was really plagiarising Stouffer’s books, you’d expect the plot to be the same, but the names to be different. Who can’t think of a name? I’d have changed Larry to Lionel, or Liam, or Lonny, and Lilly to Rose, or Laurel, or Pansy. Potter would become Pierce, or Cotter, or Jones. If Rowlings really did rip off the word “muggle” from Stouffer, I think she’d be smart enough not to pinch the names of two of her main characters from the same book. Then Stouffer could scream all she wanted about the word “muggle” being used, but Lonny Pierce is sufficiently different from Larry Potter that she couldn’t add it to her list of “infringements”.
I happen to think this Stouffer woman (who wrote the “original” books) is full of shit. Her evidence is not really credible. She’s just jumping on the Harry Potter bandwagon, hoping that someone will read her really obscure books. If you look at the evidence she presents, it’s really easy to find loopholes. And what about her? What a coincidence that she is re-releasing these books under the name “N.K. Stouffer”. The original name she used was Nancy Stouffer. But look at the evidence presented:
*Potter–a pretty common English surname. Harry and Larry are common boy names, too. It’s like making a character in your book “John Smith” then sueing everybody who uses that name.
*The simularities between the drawings of Harry and Larry–how many little boys do you see with brown/black hair, skinny, and with glasses? I like to write stories, and I know I have at least one character who’s skinny and wears glasses, and who’s a boy. Ooops…I must have copied that from Stouffer, though. My bad.
*How in the world could Rowling read a copy of Stouffer’s original books when Rowling lives in Scotland and the obscure books were printed in the U.S.? When they were released, Rowling was living in Portugal.
That’s just a few explanations. You can go to the site and make up your own mind. I wonder if this “N.K.” Stouffer realizes that most of the hits she gets from her site is from Harry Potter fans. Heck, the drawings of the Muggles she has look like Cancer-ridden little kids!
I read quite a lot on this. Even other authors who have gained compensation for copyright infringement (or whatever it might be) don’t see this as the case here.
How much background reading must Rowling have done prior to getting down to work ? I do think it’s a difficult judgement to make but the human mind can think it’s dreaming up all kinds of 100% original ideas that are, in fact, partly jumbled up sub-conscious associations (and that’s not easy to say!). Names are possibly the easiest thing to think are 100% original.
I can actually speak to this a little in terms of ideas. Last October, author Neil Gaiman, creator of Sandman and Timothy Hunter, appeared at the Vic Theatre here in Chicago (and I hgighly recommend catching any appearance by him that you can - fine storyteller).
Anyhoo, someone asked Mr. Gaiman if he felt ripped off by J. K. Rowling, as Harry Potter bears an interesting resemblance to Timothy Hunter (both are bespectacled, dark-haired British boys who are told that they are really potentially powerful wizards). Now, anyone who has read both would laugh at such an idea, as the premises and tones of the books could not be any more different. The Potter books, though they do have their dark side, are more children oriented in their descriptions of magic and life. The Hunter books, on the other hand, are much more adult (with eviscerations, demons doing Very Nasty Things & a guide who tries to kill Timothy Hunter in the first storyline).
Well, Mr. Gaiman chuckled ruefully at the question (I got the impression that he ws sick of the subject), and related a conversation he had with Terry Pratchett about how all authors in one way or another are reaching into the stewpot of ideas, and that Rowling had taken a similar idea and taken it on a very different tack. Mr. Gaiman didn’t seem to have any sort of problem with Rowling’s creations., a very reasonable attitude.
As for Larry Potter, I agree with an earlier poster. I find it hard to believe that J.K. Rowling somehow ran across an incredibly obscure book pubblished in the US in 1985 while she was living in Portugal. With no Amazon, Bibliofind and the like, I think it would be incredibly hard to believe that Rowlin had ever even heard of the book. For that matter, Simon & Schuster, even before they published the 1st book in the states, obtained a court judgement that the book was not violating the earlier copyright for Larry Potter.
As I said, I just caught the tail end of this bit of news (some would find the term debatable) on T.V. I must admit that I am not a HP fan and have never read a single HP book. I simply found the coincidence a bit striking and odd.
I DID, however, go to the above-mentioned site: my first impression is that this lady wants to make some financial mileage out of this. But I could be wrong. Let’s say that things seem a bit murkier than what I was led to believe from a few seconds of T.V. viewing.
Well, I just caught the news promo for this, so I had no idea what was happening. All I saw was a picture of the “Larry Potter” book and talk of copyright infringement.
After reading the site, I find it rather strange how big of a deal the media is making out of it. Though, I suppose it should be expected, as they tend to feed off controversy when it comes to big names.
Frankly, I would have been more inclined to think the worst had Stouffer not put up that comparison on her site. The name thing doesn’t really work if the plots are completely different. Her site doesn’t even bother to mention if they have similar purposes in the story. And similarities like “four houses - five colonies”, “Governor - Friar”, and “Book of Monsters -to- the Ancient Book of Tales” don’t really add credibility to her argument. It looks like her points were weak, so she tried to find anything in her book that even remotely resembled hers.
She mentions the simularities between “Nimbus.” She says Rowling copied off of her “Nimbus” character, which is some creature that flies around by creating the Nimbus 2000, which is a flying broom. Nimbus refers to clouds, and clouds are in the air. This was the one point that made me lose all respect (the tiny .000000001%) that I had for Stouffer.
“She’s obviously copying off of me. She has boys and girls in her story, just like me!”
I shouldn’t get so worked up about this, because nothing will happen to Rowling and Stouffer will just continue on to be a bitter old lady, moreso than she already is. Ah well…
Well, lets hope that L. Frank Baum’s estate doesn’t sue, since he used wizards in childrens books before either of those women. Of course, he will then be sued by the Grimm brothers estate, and on and on.
And i find it odd that the Larry Potter lady never mentions that Harry Potter is named after a childhood friend of J. K. Rowlings, and is a real person.
(and i saw an episode of Monty Python where a character was named Harold Potter, and he was eaten by some sort of space cake or something. maybe they should sue)