You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
The trustee of the estate of the late Willy the Wizard author Adrian Jacobs has paid £50,000 to the court, meaning his appeal and the copyright lawsuit against J K Rowling and Bloomsbury will continue.
The full trial is now scheduled for February 2012, with the appeal to be heard in July 2011 at the Court of Appeal.
Paul Allen, acting on behalf of Jacobs' estate, claims Rowling's agent Christopher Little passed a copy of Willy the Wizard to Rowling, who then, the estate claims, plagiarised elements of it in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. During an earlier ruling, Justice David Kitchen said: "It is inherently improbable that Mr Little would have thought it worth giving a copy to Ms Rowling some eight years later."
In April this year, Allen appealed against the court order for him to pay £1.4m to court over three specified dates in order for the case to continue. As a condition of the appeal, he had to instead pay £50,000 to court by the end of 16th May, which it is understood he has done.
Neil Blair, solicitor and partner at The Christopher Little Agency, declined to comment on the new development. He reiterated the comment made in April at the time of the appeal launch, when he said: "Whilst the appeal is in progress we will not make any further comment save to confirm that we will be opposing the appeal. To repeat what our client has said before, the claims made in this case are 'not only unfounded but absurd' and we are confident she will receive the vindication she is entitled to."
Paul Allen said: "We welcome the opportunity to prove our case at trial next February and exposing the inconsistencies in the account of how J K Rowling came to write the Harry Potter books."
In January this year, the lawsuit was dismissed in the US, with Rowling's US publisher Scholastic Corp saying in a statement: "The Court's swift dismissal supports our position that the case was completely without merit."