3 Count: Disappearing Act

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1: Scholastic Sued by Author’s Estate for Similarities to Harry Potter Books

First off today, the lawsuit over alleged plagiarism in the Harry Potter books has been expanded. The estate of British author Adrian Jacobs has sued Scholastic, the U.S. publisher of the Potter series adding to the previous suits against Bloomsbury in the UK and Rowling herself. According to the suit, Rowling and Jacobs shared the same literary agent and the Harry Potter book “Goblet of Fire” has many similarities to Jacob’s “The Adventures of Willy the Wizard”, which was published 13 years prior. Scholastic had no comment on the suit.

2: Beijing Cracks Down On Piracy

Next up today, China is launching a major campaign against piracy, indicting some 600 Internet cafes on suspicion of copyright infringement, over 1/3 or all licensed cafes in the Beijing. However, it may just be a drop in the bucket as there are some 30,000 suspected businesses and China’s State Copyright Bureau simply lacks the resources to pursue them. This comes after Microsoft began taking their own action against Internet cafes in the country for using pirated copies of Windows.

3: Publisher Sued For Reposting Article Based On His Own Research

Finally today, Righthaven, a company representing the Las Vegas Review-Journal, sued Anthony Curtis for republishing portions of their content. While this is not unusual, especially considering the recent history with Righthaven, the article Curtis was accused of pulling from was one he contributed research to for free. Curtis, who is the publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor, provided statistics to the Review-Journal about average ticket prices and reused at least some of the article on his site. Curtis has said he expects the lawsuit to “disappear” but the Review-Journal has said it felt the lawsuit was appropriate.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

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