Larry and Harry

During my communications this term we had a lecture about intellectual property, basically copyrights. An interesting thing we learned was that it is possible for a person to create the same exact version of something, even though it was already created and copyrighted, as the other created might not have known about the work. If the other creator was proven to have no knowledge of the other work, then the money earned for the second already copyrighted work would have to be shared amongst the two. That was neat, and seems nearly impossible for that to happen today with the help of the internet. But the second interesting thing we learned was about a case involving Harry Potter.

This case involved J.K Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter (I would hope everyone knows this) and an author by the name of Nancy Stouffer. Stouffer brought up this case in 2000 claiming that Rowling had stolen the idea of Harry Potter. Stouffer's book was called Larry Potter and His Best Friend Lilly. The characters names were similar, I'll give her that. Also both Harry and Larry wear glasses. The highest form of evidence that Stouffer had was that she claims she had created the term "muggles." During my class the professor stated that Stouffer mainly lost the case because her book was just worse that Harry Potter, so the courts did not rule in her favor. But as I found out on Cracked.com the case ended in a different manor. Stouffer created Larry Potter in 1988, but only found out one mention of his last name being Potter, and the font for "Potter" was written in a text that had not been created until 1993. Stouffer had changed pages far after her book had been created to add the word "muggle."

Maybe this case was common knowledge to most, but hey, I didn't know about it.