The Trial -- My Prediction: JKR wins/loses

[Lee Kaiwen]

So I've been doing some reading of the trial transcripts over at Leaky, 
and court documents at Justia. And in the service of making a complete 
and utter fool of myself in public, I'm going to toss out my predictions:

1. The judge will rule against RDR/SVA.
2. There will be no appeal.
3. The only party who will NOT be happy with the decision will be JKR/WB.

If one thing is apparent from the transcripts and court documents, it's 
that the plaintiffs have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to 
prove that the lexicon is little more than a cut-n-paste hack of JKR's 
works. As evidence they have offered example entries such as the Sorting 
Hat and Acromantula. It would certainly appear, to my eye, that the 
near-verbatim resemblance to JKR's writings for these two entries would 
constitute plagiarism and, in all likelihood, copyright infringement.

I haven't bothered with any detailed comparisons myself; I am simply 
assuming in that the entries cited are representative of the lexicon as 
or, at the least, there are a sufficient number of similar passages as 
to constitute a significant problem for the defendants.

I predict the plaintiffs will be successful in their attempts to 
demonstrate copyright infringement based on this argument, thereby 
winning the battle and losing the war. In proving their case, they will 
give the judge an out to rule against the defendants based on the 
particulars of the case without having to touch on principles (such as, 
are lexicons in general protected fair use?) or delve into grey areas of 
copyright and fair use.

Winners:

1) RDR/SVA.

Even though they lose the case, they win. Since the judg won't rule on 
whether , in principle, they can publish a lexicon, only that they can 
publish *this* lexicon in its current form, the easiest and quickest 
solution will be to simply rewrite the offending entries and then 
publish. RDR/SVA will not appeal the decision.

2) The judge.

As mentioned above, the judge will avoid having to swim around in murky 
(and hence, controversial) Fair Use seas. This will give both parties 
less opportunity to appeal, and hence more likely that the decision will 
stand. I'm not a judge, nor do I know any, but, being human beings, I 
suspect they hate to see their decisions overturned.

Loser:

JKR/WB.

Even though the ruling goes in their favor, they don't get what they 
really want, which is a ruling, on principle, that 
lexicons/encyclopediae are infringing works. Hence, under this ruling, 
the defendants, after rewriting their book, will be free to publish 
(barring a new lawsuit). In addition, as the putative winners in the 
case, it will be very difficult for the plaintiffs to appeal.

OK, there it is -- my prediction. JKR/WB lose by winning, there is no 
appeal, and the lexicon (albeit a heavily rewritten version) gets 
published eventually.

Feel free to throw this prediction back in my face when I turn out to be 
utterly and abysmally wrong.

--CJ