Rowling's Legal Wizardry Gets Potter Guide Banned

JK Rowling's wizardry extends beyond the power of the written word, as she proved when she waved her magic wand over a proposed encyclopedia of the Harry Potter books and poof! it was gone.

The multi-millionaire author pulled off her vanishing trick on the A to Z of her best-selling books and films with the help of a federal judge in New York. Judge Robert Patterson ruled that the independently-produced guide would have "irreparably harmed" Rowling as a writer, as he placed a permanent ban on its publication.

The ruling also leaves the publisher of the proposed 400-page reference book, the Lexicon, facing financial penalties. Although the small Michigan-based RDR Books will only have to pay the minimum in statutory damages of $6,750 (£3,840), it is left with thousands of redundant copies of the book.

Rowling presented her case in April in Manhattan, in her first court appearance. For such a prominent public figure, she clearly found the experience daunting, coming close to tears and expressing in emotive terms how the Lexicon had impacted on her work.

She told the court her creativity was being "plundered" and said: "It's really decimated my creative work over the last month."

The judge commented tartly in his ruling that Rowling's views had been "overstated". But he agreed with her that the Lexicon had gone beyond the fair use of her work in creating a volume of reference.

He found that the Lexicon would have harmed her intention to produce her own Harry Potter encyclopedia, the proceeds of which she has promised to charity.

In a statement, Rowling said she took no pleasure in bringing the legal action but was delighted the court had ruled in her favor. "I went to court to uphold the right of authors everywhere to protect their own original work," she said.

The Lexicon was written in just one month, in a rush to become the first in-depth guide to the completed Potter series after the seventh and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released in July 2007. The author, a former librarian, Steven Vander Ark, runs a website called Harry Potter Lexicon, or HPL to fans, which has been praised by Rowling in the past.