A district court judge ruled in favor of J. K. Rowling yesterday in her action against RDR Books, which was going to press with a print version of a popular on-line Harry Potter “lexicon.” I stood up for the lexicon a few months ago, as an impartial observer, but a big fan of useful reference books and a not-so-big fan of copyright creep. And got a bunch of angry “Howlers” via owl from Harry Potter diehards, who are fiercely loyal to their Scottish Billionaire Warrior Queen.

I haven’t read the ruling yet, but I gather that the judge did at least rule that reference works based on fictional worlds are “transformative” in a legal sense. In other words, this particular reference work lost out only because it borrowed too heavily from Rowling’s actual language in a few cases. Based on discussion here, I gather those were the rephrased entries from Rowling’s own mini-reference books (the Quidditch one, the magical beasts one…I can’t remember the exact titles) and possibly some lines of Rowling verse used verbatim in the lexicon.

I can’t really fault the decision if verbatim copying was the issue, but I still think it spells bad news in the long run. Nothing to do with Rowling and Steven Vander Ark, the out-of-work librarian who spent countless hours compiling the now-quashed lexicon. (Despite Rowling’s ominous-sounding statement that she mostly needed to win the case so that no one could ever again “divert some Harry Potter profits into their own pockets.” “Divert?”)

I just suspect the lexicon ruling will have a chilling effect on future scholars and publishers wanting to produce any reference work about copyrighted fiction, whether it’s James Joyce or Douglas Adams. In the past, these guides have typically been published by small publishers without deep pockets or high-powered lawyers. If this high-profile case is all they know about the legal issues involved, are they going to say, “Sure, we’ll publish this! But let’s make sure it passes all the requirements of the common legal fair use tests first!”? Or are they just going to say, “Wait, is this like that Harry Potter encyclopedia? We can’t do that! What if some big publisher comes after us?”

Stay tuned for my stirring defense of the Hari Puttar movie.