Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 22:20:45 -0400
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at mail.press.jhu.edu>
To: <wsfalist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Stouffer Stuffed, Like a Licensed Muggle
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Forwarded for your bemusement . . .

mjw

>>> Publishers Weekly <PWNewsLine at email.publishersweekly.com> 09/18/02 =
07:35PM >>>
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Stouffer Stuffed, Like a Licensed Muggle

It must have seemed like a good idea to Nancy Stouffer at the time:
Seek justice against Scholastic and win a huge monetary award. Then
again, giving  Connie Chung her own talk show must have seemed like a
good idea at some point too.

Judge Allen Schwartz of the U.S. Court for the Southern District of
New York has rejected claims by Stouffer that Harry Potter infringed
the trademarks of Stouffer's Muggles characters. The court further
found that Stouffer had "perpetrated a fraud on the court" and ordered
her to pay $50,000 in attorney's fees and court costs.

In its decision, the court ruled that "the publication, distribution
and exploitation of the Harry Potter books does not violate any of
Stouffer's intellectual property rights." The ruling also prohibits
Stouffer from "making false representations" that she owns all rights
to the Muggle trademark. Moreover, the court found that a number of
materials claimed by Stouffer to have been copied appeared to have
been created or altered after the first Potter book was published. In
levying the $50,0o0 sanctions against Stouffer, the court said that
she had "engaged in a pattern of intentional bad faith conduct and
failed to correct her fraudulent submissions."

Stouffer filed suit in March 2000 charging Scholastic, J.K. Rowling,
Time Warner, Mattel and Hasbro with eight counts of trademark
infringement. In November 1999 Scholastic, along with TW's Warner
Bros. division, had filed a lawsuit asking the court to issue a
judicial declaration that the Potter books do not infringe Stouffer's
trademarks. The two suits were eventually combined.

The Muggles titles, originally published in 1984, were republished in
2001 by Thurman House. Sales of the books were disappointing and
Thurman House was when parent company Ottenheimer Publishers went out
of business.--Jim Milliot