In Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. v. RDR Book, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York held that a Lexicon that cataloged terms, events, characters, other aspects of plaintiff’s Harry Potter books copied a sufficient quantity of the creative expression contained in the book series to support a finding of substantial similarity between the lexicon and the books.  The court based in finding on the fact that:  (1) the Lexicon draws 450 manuscript pages worth of material primarily from the 4,100-page Harry Potter series; (2) most of the Lexicon’s 2,437 entries contain direct quotations or paraphrases, plot details, or summaries of scenes from one or more of the Harry Potter novels; and (3)  as defendant admits, “the Lexicon reports thousands of fictional facts from the Harry Potter works.”  The court also considered and rejected defendant’s fair use defense.  Rejection of the fair use defense seemed to be much more difficult for the court to decide and seemed to be more based on the Fantastic Beasts and Quidditch books rather than the seven books in the Potter series.  In fact, in reading the decision it’s surprising that the court did not conclude that defendant’s use was a fair use.  For instance, in considering the first fair use factor, the court concluded that the Lexicon was transformative and, in considering the fourth fair use factor, the court concluded that the Lexicon would have no effect on the market for the original Harry Potter series, Rowling’s own planned encyclopedia, and other derivative works that Rowling would be entitled or likely to license.  The court, however, did conclude that the second and third factors weighed heavily in favor of plaintiffs (but struggled somewhat with the issue of how much a person should be able to take from a book in producing a lexicon such as this).