Stouffer Litigation and IP law

[heidi.h.tandy.c92 at alumni.upenn.edu]

No: HPFGUIDX 14869

This is veering off topic - any discussion of IP law in general 
should be moved to the HP4GU-OTCHatter list - but here, I think we're 
close enough with canon to leave it for this email
--- In HPforGrownups at y..., kenc at c... wrote:
> Then again, I'm not too clear on copyright laws. For eg. if I were 
to
> write a story set in (say) Trantor, and Trantor was an island in the
> Pacific (in my fic, at least) - would I still be violating the law?
Um, I don't know what Trantor is, but I can tell you that I remmebr a 
few articles a couple of years back about Katherine Neville, who 
wrote a book called The EIght, part of which took place at a 
(FICTIONAL) french Abbey called Montglane - she seemed tohave a 
problem with a software company that created a game called The 
Treasure of Montglane Abbey. They OBVIOUSLY took it from her novel, 
but as I understand it, they didn't actually file a suit.
However, HOGWARTS is being used by WB as a trademark, to indicate a 
source of goods - and if you set a novel at Hogwarts (setting aside 
all the issues of whether fanfic is an infringement (the answer is 
unlitigated)) you are probably violating a trademark - NOT a 
copyright. 

> OTOH, the similarities are rather close ... coincidence? If I were 
in
> NKS's place, I'm not sure I wouldn't have felt something similar
> (though I might have gone about it differently ...)
I do think the similarities are coincidence. Personally, I've 
wondered if JKR is into musicals in which case "Lily" may've come 
from the stage version of The Secret Garden, where hazel-eyed Mrs 
Craven's name was Lily, and she was killed when her son was a 
baby...not in the same way, of course, but that's what I always think 
of. (There's even a song about Lily's hazel eyes and how her niece 
has the exact same eyes. If that's a coincidence, then the parallels 
to Stouffer have to be.