Rowling's agent denies Wizard claim

15.07.10 | Philip Jones in The Bookseller

J K Rowling's literary agent Christopher Little has flatly denied that he was the agent for Adrian Jacobs, the late author of The Adventures of  Willy the Wizard, whose estate is now intent on suing Rowling, her UK publisher Bloomsbury, and her US publisher Scholastic for alleged plagiarism.

Jacobs' estate filed its latest lawsuit overnight in New York claiming that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was "substantially similar" to Jacob's 1987 novel, a book largely unknown before last year. The suit calls for Scholastic to recall the Goblet books and pay the estate all profit from it. The estate also now claims that Rowling and Jacobs were represented by the same literary agent, Christopher Little, who had copies of Jacobs’s book before Goblet was published.

However, this was denied in a new statement issued by Rowling's UK PR representative Golman Getty. The statement read: "The claim that Ms Rowling’s agent, Christopher Little, was agent to Adrian Jacobs is simply untrue."
The agency said Rowling had dismissed the claims in February as "not only unfounded but absurd”, and added that the claims made in the UK were "currently the subject of a summary judgement application by JK Rowling and her UK publishers Bloomsbury, on the basis that the claim is without merit and should therefore be dismissed without delay".