Judge wants J.K. Rowling to settle

J.K. Rowling and a publisher who wants to release an unauthorized lexicon to her Harry Potter novels should try to settle the copyright dispute out of court, a judge said Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Robert Patterson Jr. said the copyright infringement case was a legal close call, involving unresolved areas of American law, and was almost certain to end in years of appeals.

“I think this case, with imagination, could be settled,” Patterson said on the third day of the trial in New York City.

Lawyers for Rowling and Warner Bros., which holds intellectual property rights to the Potter books and films, rested their case Wednesday morning, saying they believed they had proved that “The Harry Potter Lexicon” took too much copyrighted material from Rowling’s work.