11/2/10

The State Bar of Michigan Arts, Communications, Entertainment and Sports Section will host "The Harry Potter Lexicon: Pushing the Limits of Fair Use," a seminar on copyright basics and fair use for artists, students, and legal practitioners on Saturday Nov. 13 in Ann Arbor.

The program, co-sponsored by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Cooley Law School, and the Right to Write Fund, will be from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Cooley's Ann Arbor Campus Library, at 3475 Plymouth Road.

The event will begin with a keynote address by Jack Bernard, assistant general counsel for the University of Michigan, and will contain a lecture on the fair use doctrine by Julie Ahrens, Associate Director of the Stanford Fair Use Project. It will also include an overview of the history of copyright law and a panel discussion on the recent fair use case, Rowling v RDR Books, in which Roger Rapoport, a Muskegon-based publisher, and "The Harry Potter Lexicon" fansite became embroiled in a lawsuit with J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers over the publication of a book based on the fansite, which is a reference guide to Rowling's popular Harry Potter books.

Participants in the panel discussion include Roger Rapoport, owner of RDR Books; Julie Ahrens, who was a member of RDR Books defense team; Lawrence Jordan, of Jaffe Raitt Heuer and Weiss; and Matthew W. Bower, of Stafford and Baker.

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