JK Rowling added as defendant in plagiarism suit against Bloomsbury

The estate of English author Adrian Jacobs alleges in the complaint that part of his 1987 book, “The Adventures of Willy the Wizard: No. 1 Livid Land,” was copied by Rowling. A year of wizard contests in the book was similar to a central theme of “The Goblet of Fire,” the estate says, according to a statement it issued today on PR Newswire issued today. Jacobs’s estate sued Bloomsbury Publishing Plc in a London court in June, according to the statement. The estate claims that Jacobs used concepts and themes such as wizard prisons, wizard hospitals and wizard colleges before Rowling did. The two authors also shared an agent, Christopher Little, who manages the Harry Potter brand worldwide, according to the statement. “I am saddened that yet another claim has been made that I have taken material from another source to write Harry,” Rowling said today in a statement e-mailed by spokesman Mark Hutchinson. “The fact is I had never heard of the author or the book before the first accusation by those connected to the author’s estate in 2004; I have certainly never read the book.”