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4 Legal disputes over the Harry Potter series and views
In the 1990s and 2000s, Rowling was both a plaintiff and defendant in lawsuits alleging copyright infringement. Nancy Stouffer sued Rowling in 1999, alleging that Harry Potter was based on stories she published in 1984.Rowling won in September 2002.Richard Posner describes Stouffer's suit as deeply flawed and notes that the court, finding she had used "forgedand altered documents", assessed a $50,000 penalty against herWith her literary agents and Warner Bros., Rowling has brought legal action against publishers and writers of Harry Potter knockoffs in several countries. In the mid-2000s, Rowling and her publishers obtained a series of injunctions prohibiting sales or published reviews of her books before their official release dates.Beginning in 2001, after Rowling sold film rights to Warner Bros., the studio tried to take Harry Potter fan sites offline unless it determined that they were made by "authentic" fans for innocuous purposes. In 2007, with Warner Bros., Rowling started proceedings to cease publication of a book based on content from a fan site called The Harry Potter Lexicon. The court held that Lexicon was neither a fair use of Rowling's material nor a derivative work, but it did not prevent the book from being published in a different form.Lexicon was published in 2009.
Philanthropy
Aware of the good fortune that led to her wealth and fame,and wanting to use her public image to help others despite her concerns about publicity and the press, Rowling became, in the words of Smith, "emboldened ... to stand up and be counted on issues that were important to her".As early as 2000, while she was still writing the Harry Potter series, Rowling established the Volant Charitable Trust, named after her mother.Its mission is to "alleviate social deprivation, with a particular emphasis on supporting women, children and young people at risk".Rowling and MEP Emma Nicholson founded Lumos in 2005 (then the Children's High Level Group).She was appointed president of the charity Gingerbread (originally One Parent Families) in 2004,after becoming its first ambassador in 2000.She also collaborated with Sarah Brown in writing a book of children's stories to benefit One Parent Families.Rowling's charitable donations before 2012 were estimated by Forbes at $160 million.[She was the second most generous UK donor in 2015 (following singer Elton John), giving about $14 million.Lumos has advocated for reform in orphanage care in Ukraine since 2013, working with an orphanage west of Kyiv. After the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Rowling stated she will personally match up to £1 million in donations made toward an emergency appeal launched by Lumos.Rowling has made donations to support medical causes. She named another institution for her mother when, in 2010, she donated £10 million to found a multiple sclerosis research centre at the University of Edinburgh.She gave an additional £15.3 million to the centre in 2019. During the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, accompanied by an inflatable representation of Lord Voldemort, she read from Peter Pan as part of a tribute to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.To support COVID-19 relief, she donated six-figure sums to both Khalsa Aid and the British Asian Trust from royalties for The Ickabog.
Several publications in the Harry Potter universe have been sold for charitable purposes. Profits from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, both published in 2001, went to Comic Relief.To support Children's Voice, later renamed Lumos, Rowling sold a deluxe copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard at auction in 2007. Amazon's £1.95 million purchase set a record for a contemporary literary work and for children's literature.Rowling published the book and, in 2013, donated the proceeds of nearly £19 million (then about $30 million) to Lumos.Rowling and 12 other writers composed short pieces in 2008 to be sold to benefit Dyslexia Action and English PEN. Rowling's contribution was an 800-word Harry Potter prequel.When the revelation that Rowling wrote The Cuckoo's Calling led to an increase in sales,she donated the royalties to ABF The Soldiers' Charity (formerly the Army Benevolent Fund).
Views
Rowling was actively engaged on the internet before author webpages were commonShe has amassed a following on Twitter,an important platform where she connects with Harry Potter fans.She often tweets about her political opinions using wit and sarcasm, sometimes generating controversy.
In 2008 Rowling donated £1 million to the Labour Party, endorsed Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown over his Conservative challenger David Cameron, and commended Labour's policies on child poverty.When asked about the 2008 United States presidential election, she stated that "it is a pity that Clinton and Obama have to be rivals because both are extraordinary."In her "Single mother's manifesto" published in The Times in 2010, Rowling criticised Prime Minister Cameron's plan to encourage married couples to stay together by offering them an annual tax credit. She thought that the proposal discriminated against single parents, whose interests the Conservative Party failed to consider.She opposed the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, due to concerns about the economic consequences, and donated £1 million to the Better Together anti-independence campaign,and campaigned for the United Kingdom to stay in the European Union in the run-up to the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. She defined herself as an internationalist, "the mongrel product of this European continent",and expressed concern that "racists and bigots" were directing parts of the Leave campaign.She opposed Benjamin Netanyahu, and believed that depriving Israelis of shared culture would not dislodge him.In 2015, Rowling joined 150 others in signing a letter published in The Guardian espousing cultural engagement with Israel.
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