6. Rowling Was Accused Of Plagiarising The Adventures Of Willy The Wizard
Or to give it its full title: The Adventures Of Willy The Wizard: Livid Land. In 2009, the estate of deceased children's author Adrian Jacobs sued Bloomsbury for five-hundred million dollars, claiming she had plagiarised large parts of Livid Land for use in Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire. The Adrian Jacobs estate's claims, however, were just as shaky as the title of Jacobs' book. They claimed that both Willy and Harry have to work out the nature of a contest, they both receive help in a bathroom and that they're both attempting to rescue human hostages from half-human, half-animal fantasy creatures (don't worry if that last one lost you it lost me too). Of course, once the estate realised that it had literally no chance of getting any money from anybody, it changed tactic and filed suit against Rowling's American publisher Scholastic. What did they want? Oh, not much just for the publisher to burn every existing copy of Goblet Of Fire. Needless to say, the case went nowhere, and the existence of the forth entry in the Harry Potter series was spared.
