Harry Potter Lexicon Author Breaks Down on the Stand

[WSJ_law_blog]

Law Blogger Dan Slater is back in action today over at the Harry Potter trial in downtown Manhattan. He recently filed the report below. Click here and here for his dispatches from yesterday.

What looked like ribbons of moving images flew from it, unraveling like rolls of film...
– description of the “Brain Room” in J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”
The brains fly out of the tank, unspooling ribbons of thought like strips of film...
– description of the “Brain Room” in Steven Vander Ark’s “Harry Potter Lexicon”

NEW YORK — How much does the Harry Potter Lexicon add to the universe of knowledge about Harry Potter? In copyright phraseology, is the purported reference guide, written by Steven Vander Ark, a self-proclaimed Potter fanatic, transformative?

As Vander Ark, a 50 year-old former librarian from Michigan, took the stand this morning in the case of J.K. Rowling and Warners vs. RDR Books, that issue — what, exactly, the lexicon is — took center stage. At 50, Vander Ark looks far younger than his years. He wears boyish glasses and has a full head of hair parted down the middle. He speaks with a soft, librarian’s tone, as if reading to a group of children. A few Potter fans sitting behind the Law Blog mentioned that Vander Ark looks a little like Potter himself, and though we wouldn’t have made the comparison ourselves, we have to say we agree.

But let’s not lose our legal focus. Here’s the break-down of Vander Ark’s testimony, which ran even longer than Rowling’s:

Does the Lexicon Illuminate? Yesterday, in her testimony, Rowling argued that the lexicon is useless because it’s merely an alphabetical rearrangement of her work, with many inaccuracies to boot. But today, when Rowling’s attorney, Dale Cendali, asked Vander Ark whether he thought his lexicon “copies” Rowling’s work, he evaded the question somewhat with this answer: “It’s a reference book to a piece of literature, so naturally it refers back to the source material... There are places where we use phrases that are identical or similar.”

When RDR’s attorney, David Hammer, took his turn to examine Vander Ark, he expanded on that. When asked what the primary value of the lexicon is, Vander Ark, borrowing a term from his own profession, called the lexicon a “ready-reference” with “synthesizing qualities,” where you can quickly find information about the massive Potter universe.

Did Vander Ark Knowingly Infringe? Cendali tried to elicit a sense of the copyright knowledge that Vander Ark, a longtime librarian, might have, and that perhaps he knew ahead of time that RDR planned to infringe Rowling’s copyright. Cendali showed an e-mail from Vander Ark to the host of another Potter fan site. Vander Ark, apparently disillusioned with the deal he struck with RDR in August, wrote: “I am more than willing to dissociate myself with RDR. They have lied to me, misled me, taken advantage of me and in the end ruined my good standing with fans and with Rowling.”

What’s More Important to the Parties? Money or Passion? Yesterday, Rowling said the case isn’t about money, but about principle. One of RDR’s lawyers, Anthony Falzone, in his opening remarks said that for Vander Ark it was never about money, but rather passion. Today we got a sense of where thing stand on both fronts. According to Vander Ark, he’s made about $6,500 off his Web site — all through advertising — between 2000 and 2008.

But the most telling part of Vander Ark’s testimony came at the end of Hammer’s direct examination. Asked whether he still considered himself a part of the Harry Potter fan community — those that, in Vander Ark’s words, devote most of their free time to all things Potter, he choked up, and said, “I did.” But then, when pressed on it, he changed his answer. “I do,” he said, breaking up.

Hammer then asked him why the question was so “emotionally-charged.” Regaining his composure, and trying hard to look past J.K. Rowling, whom the plaintiffs counsel positioned directly in front of the witness stand, Vander Ark said, “It’s been difficult because there’s been a lot of criticism and that was never the intention. I understand where that comes from, but it’s difficult. The lexicon has been an important part of my life for the last 8 or 9 years of my life, and now, to have it turn into this...”