NEW YORK (AP) - J.K. Rowling said Monday that her efforts to halt a publisher's "Harry Potter" lexicon have been crushing her creativity.
Rowling said she has stopped work on a new novel because the lawsuit in federal court has "decimated my creative work over the last month."
Rowling is suing RDR Books to stop publication of Steven Vander Ark's "Harry Potter Lexicon." She says her copyrights are being violated.
"This book constitutes wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work," she testified Monday.
RDR's lawyer, Anthony Falzone, defended the lexicon as a reference guide. Falzone calls it a legal effort "to organize and discuss the complicated and very elaborate world of Harry Potter."
When Dale Cendali, Rowling's lawyer, asked how she felt about Harry, she replied: "I really don't want to cry."
Rowling brought the lawsuit against Vander Ark's publisher last year.
The legal showdown could last most of the week. Rowling will spend her breaks in the seclusion of a jury room away from any die-hard "Potter" fans.
The trial in U.S. District Court comes eight months after Rowling published her seventh and final book in the series. The books have been published in 64 languages, sold more than 400 million copies and produced a film franchise that has pulled in $4.5 billion at the worldwide box office.
Rowling is a fan of the Harry Potter Lexicon Web site that Vander Ark runs. But she draws the line when it comes to publishing the book and charging $24.95. She also says it fails to include any of the commentary and discussion that enrich the Web site and calls it "nothing more than a rearrangement" of her own material.
One of her lawyers, Dan Shallman, on Friday told Judge Robert P. Patterson, who is hearing the trial without a jury, that Rowling "feels like her words were stolen."
He said the author felt so personally violated that she made her own comparisons among her seven best-selling novels and the lexicon and was ready to testify about the similarities in dozens of instances.
David Saul Hammer, a lawyer for RDR Books, which plans to sell the lexicon, said the publisher will not challenge the claim by Rowling that much of the material in the lexicon infringed her copyrights.
But the judge will decide whether the use of the material by the small Muskegon, Mich., publisher was legal because it was used for some greater purpose, such as a scholarly pursuit.
In court papers filed before the trial, Rowling said she was "deeply troubled" by the book.
"If RDR's position is accepted, it will undoubtedly have a significant, negative impact on the freedoms enjoyed by genuine fans on the Internet," she said. "Authors everywhere will be forced to protect their creations much more rigorously, which could mean denying well-meaning fans permission to pursue legitimate creative activities."
In court papers, Vander Ark, 50, said he was a teacher and school librarian in Byron Center, Mich., before recently moving to London to begin a career as a writer.
He said he joined an online discussion group devoted to the 'Harry Potter' books in 1999 before launching his own Web site as a hobby a year later. Since then, neither Rowling nor her publisher had ever complained about anything, he said.
In May 2004, he said, Rowling mentioned his Web site on her own, writing, "This is such a great site that I have been known to sneak into an Internet cafe while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of "Harry Potter" (which is embarrassing). A Web site for the dangerously obsessive; my natural home."
The Web site attracts about 1.5 million page views per month and contributions from people all over the world, Vander Ark said.
He said he initially declined proposals to convert the Web site into an encyclopedia, in part because he believed until last August that in book form, it would represent a copyright violation.
After Rowling released the final chapter in the "Harry Potter" series that month, Vander Ark was contacted by an RDR Books employee, who told him that publication of the lexicon would not violate copyright law, he said.
