Allen v. Scholastic Inc.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• explaining that the characters of male wizards who receive formal schooling for wizardry and compete in wizardry competitions constituted “a general prototype too indistinct to merit copyright protection”
• emphasizing total concept and feel in comparison of the plaintiffs’ books to a Harry Potter book
• rejecting substantial similarity because of, among other factors, differences in structure, theme, and plot
• plot features of wizard protagonists participating in a wizarding competition in a castle “constitute scenes a faire that flow naturally from a work’s theme rather than from an author’s creativity” (quotation marks and citation omitted)

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).