Deceased author's estate sues Bloomsbury over Potter

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!

Posted by Andrew on Jun 15th | 108 Comments