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The battle between Harry Potter and Willy the Wizard moved to the High Court yesterday, where JK Rowling and her publisher Bloomsbury began their first moves to strike out a lawsuit brought by the trustees of the estate of the late Adrian Jacobs, which claims that themes from Jacobs’ 1987 book The Adventures of Willy the Wizard are replicated in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, published 13 years later.
The allegations that Rowling copied ideas from an unknown author in writing the fourth Harry Potter book were described in the High Court as “fanciful” and “absurd”, reports the FT.
John Baldwin QC, representing Rowling, told the High Court that the copyright infringement claim should be dismissed before it went to trial. Rowling “did not copy the claimants work and there are no grounds for thinking otherwise”, he said. “We do not hold back – we say the allegations are a disgrace ... and should never have been made,” he told Mr Justice Kitchin.