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Originally Posted by slayda
What I find interesting is that Rowling will most probably "steal" the intellectual (although not copy righted) idea for a lexicon and profit from the idea someone else had.  She sure didn't seem too interested in one until Ark started his. |
On the contrary, she had been talking about it for a while. Fans were asking for it. Also, she has indicated that like several other of her books (the two "textbooks" and the upcoming Beedle the Bard book), the profits from the "Scottish book" as she jokingly called it during the lawsuit will most likely be donated to charity.
No one should accuse J.K. Rowling of greed. She didn't make anyone buy her books, and she has done a great deal of charity work. I don't agree with her stance on e-books and I do think she takes herself a bit too seriously at times but I have to stand up for a fellow Janeite.
Another thing that I found interesting about the opinion--and it was certainly in the reports of the trial and I didn't quite put it together--was that Steve Vander Ark always thought that hard-copy publication of the Lexicon would be an infringement of Rowling's copyright and the publisher convinced him it would not be. And it should be pointed out that only the publisher was being sued.
It should be added that the whole thing could have been settled before the lawsuit was even filed, and perhaps even allowed for the publication of some version of the Lexicon, but the publisher refused to cooperate with the plaintiffs' requests for copies of the ms., etc. JKR and WB filed suit because they couldn't get the publisher's attention without forcing them into it. She has certainly permitted other, similar books that had more original content or did a better job of paraphrasing.