On Monday, we told you about a new lawsuit against Bloomsbury from the Estate of Adrian Jacobs. The Estate claims that JK Rowling took various plot items from Jacobs' Willy the Wizard story.

Thanks to MuggleNet reader Amy, we now know of a new video interview with an Estate representative. He spoke with the Australian Morning Show "Sunrise" - video is now available on their site.

Watching this video shows you how weak the case is. The representative repeatedly mentions JK Rowling allegedly stealing the wizard train, wizard school, and wizard competitions. In our opinion, those three items are very broad accusations for a court case.

Author Adrian Jacob's estate filed a lawsuit against UK Potter publisher Bloomsbury today, claiming that JK Rowling stole the plot of Jacob's 1987 novel The Adventures of Willy the Wizard-No 1 Livid Land. From the Estate's press release:

Both books describe the adventures of a main character, "Willy" in Jacobs' book and "Harry Potter" in Rowling's, who are wizards, who compete in a wizard contest which they ultimately win. Both Willy and Harry are required to work out the exact nature of the main task of the contest which they both achieve in a bathroom assisted by clues from helpers, in order to discover how to rescue human hostages imprisoned by a community of half-human, half-animal fantasy creatures, "the merpeople" in Harry Potter.

Bloomsbury quickly responded with a press release of their own. Our friends at HPANA received a copy of the statement and passed it along to us. An excerpt:

...this claim is without merit and will be defended vigorously. The allegations of plagiarism made today, 15 June 2009, by the Estate of Adrian Jacobs are unfounded, unsubstantiated and untrue.

JK Rowling had never heard of Adrian Jacobs nor seen, read or heard of his book Willy the Wizard until this claim was first made in 2004 -- almost seven years after the publication of the first book in the highly publicised Harry Potter series and after the publication of the first five books.

Willy the Wizard is a very insubstantial booklet running to 36 pages which had very limited distribution. The central character of Willy the Wizard is not a young wizard and the book does not revolve around a wizard school.

Read the full press release right here. We'll keep you updated on how this case is handled! Thanks to everyone who e-mailed with the tip!

A Prague court today suspended and fined Czech publisher Vlastimil Svoboda for printing and selling pirated copies of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Back in 2001, printing house Ottovo Nakladatelstvi published 10,000 copies of the fourth Potter novel knowing another local printer had the rights. The fine was equal to roughly $10,200.

A new survey asking 4,000 UK residents which books they couldn't finish found Goblet of Fire at #2. Just under a third of adult Britons admitted leaving some of the book unread.