Harry Potter Author Sues New York Paper for Leaking Secrets of Latest Book

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, June 20, 2003

Harry Potter Author Sues New York Paper for Leaking Secrets of Latest Book

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The author of Harry Potter, one of the best-selling book series, is lodging a 100-million-dollar lawsuit against The New York Daily News for giving away secrets of the latest installment ahead of its weekend release.

Author J.K. Rowling's publisher accused the Daily News of in fringing on the author's copyright by running a synopsis of the yet-to-be released "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" in Wednesday's paper.

The lawsuit against the Daily News, prepared by lawyers for Rowling and the US publisher Scholastic Inc. claimed that the newspaper damaged Rowling's intellectual property rights and harmed Scholastic's 3-million-dollar worldwide marketing campaign.

The book, the fifth installment of the adventure of the boy wizard, has been kept in extreme secrecy ahead of its release. In a statement, Scholastic said it hoped "this unfortunate situation will not spoil the surprise for millions of children around the country who have been eagerly awaiting the book."

The Daily News insisted it did nothing wrong by publishing the synopsis. The paper bought the book at an organic food store in Brooklyn that had mistakenly put the book out for sale Wednesday despite an embargo until Saturday.

"We will vigorously defend any action and are confident we did nothing wrong journalistically or legally," said the paper's spokesman Ken Frydman.

Carlos Aguila, the owner of the Karrot Health Food Store, said he had no idea that he could not start selling the highly anticipated book before Saturday.

"We began selling the book on Monday as an innocent mistake," said Aguila. "We had no idea there was going to be a release date on the 21st, and obviously if we had known we would have honored that. But we're not in the bookselling business here - we sell health foods."

The book is scheduled for sale at 12:01 a.m. local time on Saturday. Many bookstores are planning Harry Potter-theme parties, but the biggest celebration could be the countdown to midnight being held in Times Square on Friday night.

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