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The Bogside Artists contacted me earlier and left a comment to let me know that the Derry News had to print an apology for the article about JK Rowling’s lawyers threatening legal action over a book the Bogside Artists have published. I never got around reading Monday’s News, but I still had a copy of the paper. Here’s their apology:

Last Monday’s front and third page article, ‘Harry Potter and the Bogside Artists’ suggested that author JK Rowling’s lawyers had complained to the Bogside Artists about a book called ‘Travels with Li Po’.

We accept that this is not true.

We have been asked to point out by Ms Rowling’s lawyers that William Kelly of the Bogside Artists had alleged in a letter that this book had been plagiarised by Ms Rowling in her Harry Potter novels.

Ms Rowling’s literary agency wrote to Mr Kelly refuting his claims and warning him that alleging that Ms Rowling had copied his work was defamatory and potentially actionable, and that he should desist from making such allegations.

Ms Rowling’s lawyers say that no complaint has been made about his book and Ms Rowling has never read Mr Kelly’s work, let alone plagiarised it.

In addition we accept that no-one on behalf of Ms Rowling has claimed that the term ‘philosopher’s stone’ is owned by Warner Bros.

We apologise for publishing false allegations and for not contacting Ms Rowling beforehand so that we might inform us of the true position.

We are happy to set the record straight.

Now William’s email to me (with his permission):

Thanks from The Bogside Artists for publishing the Derry News article. It is all true in so far as what we said were reasonable assumptions from the text of the letter sent to us by partner and solicitor to Rowling’s agent Christopher Little. However, just lately the Derry News was arm-wrestled to the ground by Rowling’s lawyers Schillings (London based) to apologise for apparent ‘errors’ which of course are in the article you have blogged. Get this; the ‘errors’ are as follows:

(1) We were not contacted by “Rowling’s lawyers” but by Little’s lawyer. Little is Rowling’s agent. Duh! A shoves B who shoves C. How wrong were we to assume A was shoving C!

(2) Warner Bros does not, they claim, have copyright on the phrase “the philosopher’s stone” although the letter to William was worded in such a way to clearly give that impression and such an interpretation would be immediately construed by anyone who read it and was indeed so construed by a lawyer who read it.

(3) Rowling has denied ever having heard of William Kelly or his book Travels with Li Po and her lawyers and associates are clearly acting on that assertion

This, to anybody with a shred of common sense, makes splitting hairs sound like tree felling. The real question to ask is “Who the hell do these people think they are?”

For us, there is a book written by one of our group called Travels with Li Po. It is there to be bought and read by anyone. It was written in 1990. This is the first chance we have had to publish it. Read it. Draw your own conclusions as you are entitled to do.

There you have it. The reason I am writing to you is that you may well be approached by Rowling’s legal hounds to remove the
offensive blog. That is entirely up to you. You ..and we.. deserve better. Our view of the matter is summed up in a blog we have set up for the book that you can find here:

http://www.bogsideartists.com/lipo/index.htm.

And a press release you will find here:

http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200812/1229861765.html

When I read the original article in the paper I took William Kelly’s ‘allegation’ as being tongue in cheek and had a good chuckle.

Rowling and Co have been threatening/suing people for years now (and some rightly so). But she frequently seems to forget that her Harry Potter books are heavily influenced by well known stories and books, some published many years before HP by authors such as Tolkien, CS Lewis and many others. Her success must have gone to her head and she seems to think that she’s got some kind of a monopoly on fantasy.

All the best to luck to you guys! Not that you’ll need it, the lawyers should fall flat on their faces with this one.

Looks like JK Rowling has got too much time on her hands again. I haven’t found anything online about this yet, so I’ll copy the whole article from today’s Derry News.

The Bogside Artists have received correspondence from JK Rowling’s lawyers threatening legal action over a book they have published which, it is claimed, bears an uncanny resemblance to Harry Potter.

The book, ‘Travels with Li Po’ by Will Kelly, has been published by The Bogside Artists and is available to buy from their website.

Like Harry Potter, the main character Eoin Muldoon is an orphan who is bullied at school and who is looking for the philosopher’s stone.

However, Mr Kelly’s book was penned in 1990, whilst JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was published in 1996.

Tom Kelly, of The Bogside Artists, explained: “The book has been available on-line for six months now so we were quite shocked to receive this letter from JK Rowling’s legal team stating they were monitoring us and threatening us with possible legal action.

“Since Will’s book was written a number of years before Harry Potter maybe it should be us threatening them with legal action and not the other way around.”

The correspondence also stated that the term ‘philosopher’s stone’ was owned by Warner Brothers.

Tom Kelly said Travels with Li Po was written by his brother Will as a follow on to his short story ‘Ace of Hearts’, which won a UK wide writing competition held by UTV in 1989.

“Travels with Li Po was submitted to a variety of publishers across the UK after it was written, including Amnesty International. Will is a respected artist and author whose work often centres around the theme of abandonment.

“Although it’s set in a fictional world this book was born out of the sense of disenfranchisement experienced in the Bogside during the troubles.”

The Bogside Artists said they are refusing to withdraw the book from sale. Mr Kelly added: “The People’s Gallery is now completed and we have decided it’s time to publish this book. We have published it for one reason, that it deserves to be.”

Ridiculous!

*** Update: The Derry News were forced to apologise. Read the apology and what the Bogside Artists have to say about it.