Harry Potter Lexicon is originally from Harry Potter Lexicon website that describes every spells that appeared in the novel. So, Ark wants to transcript the content and compiles it into a form of book and publishes it. However, the publishing issue against the lawsuit of copyright and legal issues, where JK Rowling claimed that, the content of the book actually just rearrangements of her ideas. In the book itself, there are a lot of text are taken directly from JK Rowling’s books without quotation marks. It was so alike and seems to be plagiarized from JK Rowling.
In September 2008, the high-profile Harry Potter case was put to an end. The court has decided to ban the publishing of Harry Potter Lexicon book, and Ark was found guilty under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act (1988) (UK Copyright Service 2004). According to Walker (1997), the Law of Copyright shows that patents, trademarks and copyrights are always there to protect one’ creations. Walker also stated that every different work has its own patent, hence, the author has the fully rights to their own creations.
The moral we can gain from this issue is, every author should aware of ethical publishing issue and not supposed to borrow the idea from other authors’ material without asking for permission from the owner of the original ideas. Citations of idea or proper accreditation should appear and be given to original author to support your idea. In ethics of communication, his act was unethical although he is not intending to do it.
References:
- CBS News 2008, "Harry Potter" Author Wins Copyright Claim, viewed 16th November 2009, from
- UK Copyright Service 2004, UK copyright law, viewed 16th November 2009, from http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law.
- Walker, J 1997, ‘Intellectual Property in the Information Age: A Classroom Guide to Copyright’, University of South Florida, viewed on 16th November 2009, from<http://personal.georgiasouthern.edu/~jwalker/ip/ipdummie.html#special>.
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