Neil Blair, partner at the Christopher Little Agency (CLA) which represents Rowling, said the agency was "currently considering all the options and opportunities that this evolving space provides". The agency was "actively" looking, whereas previously it had just been "monitoring the developing area", he said.

Richard Charkin, executive director of Rowling's print publisher Bloomsbury, declined to comment on whether Bloomsbury was in discussions with the author on e-book plans, saying: "That's between us and CLA."

It [the lawsuit] added that the plot of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire copied elements of the plot of Willy the Wizard, including a wizard contest, and that the Potter series borrowed the idea of wizards traveling on trains.

"Both Willy and Harry are required to work out the exact nature of the main task of the contest which they both achieve in a bathroom assisted by clues from helpers, in order to discover how to rescue human hostages imprisoned by a community of half-human, half-animal fantasy creatures," the estate statement said. "It is alleged that all of these are concepts first created by Adrian Jacobs in Willy the Wizard, some 10 years before J.K. Rowling first published any of the Harry Potter novels and 13 years before Goblet of Fire was published."

According to the statement, Jacobs had sought the services of literary agent Christopher Little who later became Rowling's agent. Jacobs died "penniless" in a London hospice in 1997, it said. In its response, Bloomsbury said Rowling "had never heard of Adrian Jacobs nor seen, read or heard of his book Willy the Wizard until this claim was first made in 2004, almost seven years after the publication of the first book in the highly publicized Harry Potter series. "Willy the Wizard is a very insubstantial booklet running to 36 pages which had very limited distribution. The central character of Willy the Wizard is not a young wizard and the book does not revolve around a wizard school."

Scholastic, Infinity Resources, Inc. and DeepDiscount.com have resolved a lawsuit filed by the children's publisher against Infinity last year. Scholastic sued Infinity which operates the DeepDiscount e-tail Web site, when copies of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in Rowling's series, were shipped to customers ahead of the book's embargoed July 21 release date.

In a statement, Scholastic said that the suit had been "satisfactorily resolved" and that "Scholastic and Infinity are pleased to put those issues behind them."

The $300m JK Rowling pulled in over the last year will make sickening reading for the majority of authors who are struggling to earn a living.

Rowling made $571 a minute between June 1 2007 and June 1 2008, according to Forbes's ranking of the world's best paid authors, thanks to last July's publication of the final novel detailing the adventures of her boy wizard, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The book has sold around 44m copies since publication, including 15m in its first 24 hours on sale, said Forbes.

Labour party supporter Rowling made a whopping six times more than second best paid author James Patterson, whose not-so-paltry $50m was drummed up through a combination of thrillers, romance and children's books. Patterson is now publishing up to eight books a year thanks to an army of "writing partners", and is also developing a computer game of his Women's Murder Club series.

Steve Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon was yesterday found by a federal judge in New York to violate JK Rowling's copyright; Rowling had previously described the book as "wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work". Of the ban, Vander Ark said: "It obviously was a blow but I'm looking forwards, moving on with other projects. I bear no ill will whatsoever to Ms Rowling."

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"Obviously I do a lot of research on Harry Potter," he said this morning. "And the more research I did the more I realised that the places in the books were places in the world, particularly those in the west country, because she went to university in Exeter."

The independent publisher describes the resulting book as an "extraordinary travel book" which "evokes the myths and magic of Harry Potter". Methuen managing director Peter Tummons said that at present, each chapter includes a "few words" taken from the Harry Potter books themselves. "We've asked for approval but I guess in the end we will probably delete them because it may not come, or be denied." The book is illustrated with Vander Ark's own photos.

In a surprise move, Warner Bros. has moved the release date of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" from Nov. 21 to July 17. Warners president Alan Horn blamed last winter's 100-day WGA strike in large part for the shift, suggesting all the major studios have been hurt in the development of new tentpole films for next summer.

"We are still feeling the repercussions of the writers strike, which impacted the readiness of scripts for other films -- changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of," Horn said. "We agreed the best strategy was to move 'Half-Blood Prince' to July, where it perfectly fills the gap for a major tentpole release for midsummer."

The move also reflects execs' belief that the "summer season is an ideal window for a family tentpole release," he said.

Rowling, who was given an honorary doctor of letters degree, urged the Harvard grads to use their influence and status to speak out on behalf of the powerless. "We do not need magic to transform our world," she said. "We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already; we have the power to imagine better."

Imagination gives one the ability to empathize with others, she said. "Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation," Rowling said. "In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity; it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared." Rowling described a low point seven years after graduating from college, when she was a poor single mother.

"The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are ever after secure in your ability to survive," Rowling said. "You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity." She called such knowledge "a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned."

An 800-word Harry Potter prequel is one of 13 card-sized works to be sold at a charity auction in the British capital. Waterstone's Booksellers Ltd. says the cream-colored A5 papers — each slightly bigger than a postcard — were distributed to 13 authors and illustrators, including the boy wizard's creator J.K. Rowling, Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing, novelist Margaret Atwood and playwright Tom Stoppard.

Rowling used both sides of her card to hand-write a prequel to her seven-book Harry Potter saga, while Lessing penned a story about the power of reading. Stoppard wrote a short mystery and Atwood was due to fill out her card remotely using a robotic arm controlled by computer linkup. Other cards were completed by children's author Michael Rosen, illustrator Axel Scheffler, graphic novelist Neil Gaiman, Lisa Appignanesi, Richard Ford, Lauren Child, Irvine Welsh, Sebastian Faulks and Nick Hornby, who plastered his card with a collage.

The cards will go on sale at the "What's Your Story?" auction at Waterstone's flagship store in central London on June 10. The proceeds are to go to English PEN, the writers' association, and the British charity Dyslexia Action. Copies of the cards will be collated into a book to be made available at the bookstore and online in August.

Rowling testified as a result of a joint lawsuit brought by her estate and Warner Brothers (the films' producers) against RDR Books to stop the publication of "The Harry Potter Lexicon," a reference book culled from thousands of pages of information posted on HP-Lexicon.org.

"I really don't want to cry, because I'm British. ... These characters meant so much to me, and continue to mean so much to me, over such a long period of time," Rowling was quoted as saying under oath. "It's very difficult for someone who is not a writer to understand. The closest I can come is to say to someone: 'How do you feel about your child?' "

*****

"I believe this book constitutes wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work. It adds little if anything by way of commentary ... and it debases what I worked so hard to create," she said in court. If the judge allows for the "Lexicon" to be published, Rowling thinks it will have longstanding effects on the relationship between authors and their biggest Internet fans.

"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 wrote in a pretrial statement to the court. "Authors everywhere will be forced to protect their creations much more rigorously."

Titled "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," the movies are set to be released in November 2010 and May 2011. They will be shot back-to-back by David Yates, who is directing the adaptation of the sixth novel, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," due in theatres November 21. Steve Kloves, who has written all but one of the "Potter" movies, also is returning to write the two-parter.

"Hallows," which sold more than 11 million copies in its first 24 hours of release, is J.K. Rowling's biggest book, weighing in at 784 pages. Adapting the novel would have resulted in truncating large swaths of it or making an extra-long feature in order to fit everything in.

The decision makes financial sense for Warners because the movies are surefire hits, and the "Potter" franchise has brought in billions of dollars for the studio.

As the creator of the Harry Potter books sees it, her kindness to fans might come back to haunt her. In papers filed for a lawsuit in Manhattan, J.K. Rowling says she feels betrayed by a fan, Steven Vander Ark, for his role in trying to publish an unauthorized reference work, "Harry Potter Lexicon."

Ark is editor of a Web site containing a fan-created collection of essays and encyclopedic material on the Potter universe, including lists of spells and potions found in the books, a catalog of magical creatures and a who's who in the wizarding world. Rowling said she was especially irked that the site's owner and the lexicon's would-be publisher, RDR Books, continued to insist that her acceptance of free, fan-based Web sites justified the efforts. "I am deeply troubled by the portrayal of my efforts to protect and preserve the copyrights I have been granted in the Harry Potter books," she wrote in court papers filed Wednesday in a lawsuit she brought against the small Muskegon, Mich., publisher.

She said she intends to publish her own definitive Harry Potter encyclopedia. "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." She added: "I find it devastating to contemplate the possibility of such a severe alteration of author-fan relations."

She called her time with Harry "one of the longest relationships of my adult life." But Rowling does not rule out writing an eighth Hogwarts book. She said: "There have been times since finishing, weak moments, when I've said, 'Yeah, all right,' to the eighth novel." "If -- and it's a big if -- I ever write an eighth book about the wizarding world, I doubt that Harry would be the central character. "I feel like I've already told his story. But these are big ifs. Let's give it 10 years and see how we feel then."

A member of the Scottish Episcopal Church, Rowling said her books had no religious agenda. "I did not set out to convert anyone to Christianity. I wasn't trying to do what CS Lewis did. It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it's perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God."

"To me, the religious parallels have always been obvious," Rowling said. "But I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going." At the end of her latest and final installment in the series, there are specific references to Christianity and themes of life after death and resurrection. At one point Harry visits his parents' graves and finds two biblical passages inscribed on their tombstones.

"They are very British books, so on a very practical note, Harry was going to find biblical quotations on tombstones," she said. "But I think those two particular quotations he finds on the tombstones ...they sum up, they almost epitomise, the whole series." However the author, who was brought up an Anglican and is now a member of the Church of Scotland, said she still wrestled with the concept of an afterlife. "The truth is that, like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes that my faith will return. It's something I struggle with a lot.

"On any given moment if you asked me if I believe in life after death, I think if you polled me regularly through the week, I think I would come down on the side of yes - that I do believe in life after death. "But it's something I wrestle with a lot. It preoccupies me a lot, and I think that's very obvious within the books."

The iterations of Potter fraud and imitation here are, in fact, so copious they must be peeled back layer by layer. There are the books, like the phony seventh novel, that masquerade as works written by Ms. Rowling. There are the copies of the genuine items, in both English and Chinese, scanned, reprinted, bound and sold for a fraction of the authorized texts. As in some other countries, there are the unauthorized translations of real Harry Potter books, as well as books published under the imprint of major Chinese publishing houses, about which the publishers themselves say they have no knowledge. And there are the novels by budding Chinese writers hoping to piggyback on the success of the series - sometimes only to have their fake Potters copied by underground publishers who, naturally, pay them no royalties.

No one can say with any certainty what the full tally is, but there are easily a dozen unauthorized Harry Potter titles on the market here already, and that is counting only bound versions that are sold on street corners and can even be found in school libraries. Still more versions exist online. These include Harry Potter and the Half-Blooded Relative Prince, a creation whose name in Chinese closely resembles the title of the genuine sixth book by Ms. Rowling, as well as pure inventions that include Harry Potter and the Hiking Dragon, Harry Potter and the Chinese Empire, Harry Potter and the Young Heroes, Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon, and Harry Potter and the Big Funnel.

Some borrow little more than the names of Ms. Rowling's characters, lifting plots from other well-known authors, like J. R. R. Tolkien, or placing the famously British protagonist in plots lifted from well-known kung-fu epics and introducing new characters from Chinese literary classics like Journey to the West. Here, the global Harry Potter publishing phenomenon has mutated into something altogether Chinese: a combination of remarkable imagination and startling industriousness, all placed in the service of counterfeiting, literary fraud and copyright violation.

Wang Lili, editor of the China Braille Publishing House, which published Harry Potter and the Chinese Porcelain Doll in 2002, one of the Chinese knockoffs, said: "We published the book out of a very common incentive. Harry Potter was so popular that we wanted to enjoy the fruits of its widely accepted publicity in China." The attitude reflected in Ms. Wang's comment goes a long way toward explaining not only the explosion of unauthorized Harry Potter literature in China, but also the much larger problem of rampant piracy in China, where travelers can find six different knockoffs of Viagra, without prescription, on display at airport drugstores, and where bootleg DVDs, fake Picassos, and even near-identical copies of famous-brand automobiles are widely available.

In the years since Voldemort's defeat, Harry and Ron have revolutionized the Auror Department at the Ministry of magic and Hermione is "pretty high up" in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. By the time of the epilogue when Harry is married to Ginny and has three children, he has risen to head of the Auror Department, but still finds time to go back to Hogwarts to give the odd lecture on Defense against the Dark Arts.

"Harry, Ron and Herimone don't join the same Ministry of Magic they had been at odds with for years; they revolutionize it and the ministry evolves into a "really good place to be. They made a new world."

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Luna Lovegood, the eccentric Ravenclaw who was fascinated with Crumple-Horned Snorkacks and Umgubular Slashkilters, continues to march to the beat of her own drum. "I think that Luna is now traveling the world looking for various mad creatures," Rowling said. "She's a naturalist, whatever the wizarding equivalent of that is." Luna does recognize the truth about her father, eventually acknowledging there are some creatures that don't exist. "But I do think that she's so open-minded and just an incredible person that she probably would be uncovering things that no one's ever seen before," Rowling said.