That case and that book

[nrenka]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:


> In fact, the "Chinese Fireball" entry is merely a list of canon 
> "facts" (appearance, habitat, etc.) in the same format used for all 
> the other dragons. There's not the faintest hint of plagiarism, and 
> the fact that she invented it (It no longer exists solely in her 
> imagination) is irrelevant. 

Actually, I don't think it is.  I've read so much about this whole
thing that I can no longer remember anything to cite, but copyright
law does, IIRC, protect these kinds of 'fictional facts', where the
only source is from the copyrighted material.  That's the issue where
the Seinfeld trivia book got whacked.  I don't know whether the trivia
book quoted the facts in the exact wording which they appeared as
dialogue in the show--I'm guessing not--but they did lose that case.

Another point that's come up, the massive amounts of work involved in
the Lexicon, are also, I think, irrelevant to copyright--Feist
disallowed the 'sweat of the brow' defense.

I'm most bothered by this cavalier attitude to something that was very
much a collective enterprise, where other fans sent in corrections of
all kinds and contributed to the online website as it stood (since at
least some people have requested their materials be pulled).

You will note that a number of the Tolkien items listed, and some of
the Harry Potter ones, are no longer in print--that's often because
they were found to be infringing, and letting them go out of print was
an agreed upon solution.