Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 17:26:00 -0400 From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at mail.press.jhu.edu> To: <wsfalist at keithlynch.net> Subject: [WSFA] Take That Nancy Stoffer . . . Thwack Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net> More on Stouffer & Rowling . . . mjw >>> Publishers Weekly <PWNewsLine at email.publishersweekly.com> 09/19/02 = 05:26PM >>> ----------------------------------------------------------- PW NewsLine http://www.publishersweekly.com ----------------------------------------------------------- Larry Crocker: Judge in Stouffer Case Showed No Mercy Amid yesterday's flurry of news we didn't have a chance to sit down and give the Scholastic decision a close read. When we finally did today, we realized just how funny it is. You don't have to read too deeply between the lines to understand how little of Stouffer's argument the judge was having. In unequivocal language, Judge Allen Schwartz said that he found "clear and convincing evidence" that there was no infringement. He used words like untruthful and fraud and concluded that Stouffer "engaged in a pattern of intentional bad faith conduct and failed to correct her fraudulent submissions even when confronted with evidence undermining the validity of those submissions." He even enjoined Stouffer against ever saying that Harry Potter violated her trademark. Stouffer's case rested on her ability to establish that she created the Muggles and Larry Potter characters in the 1980s, that Scholastic then made use of similar ideas, and that Scholastic's version would confuse readers. But the court found against Stouffer on nearly all of these. The judge accepted the claims of Scholastic et al. that Stouffer revised and interpolated material in her booklets, possibly after the Scholastic books came out, in preparation for a lawsuit. In one instance he noticed a discrepancy in typefaces on a Stouffer piece of evidence; in another he deduced that printing of a Muggles-related booklet had to have taken place at least as late as 1991, several years after Stouffer claimed it been published. Today Stouffer attorney Tom McNamara said he and Stouffer are "digesting the decision," and evaluating the best way to proceed. But indigestion may be a more appropriate reaction. In the ruling, the judge wrote that even if Stouffer created Muggles when she says she did, they are unlikely to cause any confusion, because in Scholastic's titles, "Muggles" refers to humans while in Stouffer's they are "tiny hairless creatures with elongated heads who live in a fictional, post-apocalyptic land called Aura." The characters of Larry Potter and Harry Potter, he found, are even less likely to be mistaken for one another. "Aside from the similar, though not identical, names of the main characters and the fact that both 'Larry' and 'Harry' are boys with glasses, Stouffer's booklet and plaintiff's [i.e., Scholastic et al.] books, along with their accompanying illustrations, have almost nothing in common." The court also found fraudulent an invoice to the distributor Great Northern that Stouffer had said proved that she sold Larry Potter booklets to the company in 1988. The judge said that the president's signature on an invoice had been forged, possibly by Stouffer herself. Finally, the judge said, there was no evidence that Rowling or illustrator Mary GrandPre even had access to Stouffer's work. In other words - Stouffer didn't write any books that had much to do with Harry Potter, then she didn't sell these books that she didn't write, after which Rowling didn't read these books that Stouffer didn't write and didn't sell, and then Rowling didn't base any of her characters on the material she didn't read that came from books that Stouffer didn't write or sell. Stouffer is considering an appeal.--Steven Zeitchik