JK accused of copying another writer’s work
HARRY Potter author JK Rowling’s publishers are being sued over claims that she copied the work of another children’s writer.
The estate of Adrian Jacobs, who died in 1997, yesterday filed a complaint in the High Court seeking an injunction to prevent further sales of Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire.
The action seeks either damages or a share in the profits Goblets Of Fire has made for made Bloomsbury. It also alleges that the plot used “substantial parts” from Jacobs’s lesser-known The Adventures of Willy The Wizard – No 1 Livid Land, published 10 years before the first Potter book came out.
Like Harry, Willy was a wizard who also travelled on trains.
The complaint claims that Jacobs sought the services of a literary agent Christopher Little who later became Rowling’s agent for the Harry Potter series.
Jacobs’s book was published by Bachman and Turner in 1987.
A spokesman for Bloomsbury said: “The claim is without merit and will be defended vigorously. Allegations of plagiarism are unfounded, unsubstantiated and untrue.
“Writing was very much a sideline for Jacobs and his book was of a very poor quality. He went bankrupt owing hundreds of thousands of pounds in 1960, 1965 and 1989.”
Jacobs was described in his third bankruptcy petition as an “entrepreneur, financial and corporate consultant”.
JK Rowling has been in court before to protect her work. In 2002 a New York judge threw out a copyright claim by Nancy Stouffer over her book called Larry Potter And His Best Friend Lilly.
Stouffer was fined £30,000.
