Harry Potter and the Creativity Lawsuit

Note: There are spoilers to the film "Troll" in this post, so if you want to go out and see this movie for yourself don't read any further.

I've been waiting to post on this, only because it seemed stupid to sue because two characters happened to have the same name. But as I was reading the description of the movie, there might be some SLIGHT similarities between this and the Harry Potter books.

FILM goliath Warner Bros has begun a legal fight with a director who says he devised an earlier version of the Harry Potter character.

John Buechler was behind a little known film called Troll, released in 1986, which featured a young boy called Harry Potter Jnr.

He's about to embark on a search for a star for a $45m remake of the film.

His partner, Hollywood producer Peter Davy, told The Daily Mail: "In John's opinion, he created the first Harry Potter.

"J.K. Rowling says the idea just came to her. John doesn't think so.

"There are a lot of similarities between the theme of her books and the original Troll."

From Wikipedia:

The film begins with the Potter family moving into a new apartment complex. While unpacking, their young daughter Wendy is attacked by a troll inexplicably living in the basement. Using an emerald ring, it captures Wendy in it and transforms into her. After meeting the other eccentric tenants, the family notices Wendy's unusual behavior (roaring, biting, tossing people across rooms...) but attributes her behavior to the stress of the move. The only one that notices something is terribly wrong is Harry Potter Jr. (Noah Hathaway)— not to be confused with the hero of J.K. Rowling's famous series. Frightened by his sister's sudden violent changes, he seeks solace in the company of a mysterious old lady, named Eunice St. Clair (June Lockhart), who lives upstairs. When he begins to tell her of the strange goings-on, she reveals to him her real profession: a witch. She tells him of her long history stretching back to the time of magic, when she and a man named Torok fell in love. However, the balance of the realms of magic and men where challenged by Torok in a great war and he was punished to be forever transformed into a troll. Eunice stands guard at this apartment, waiting patiently for Torok to challenge the realms again, and that is what is going on now. The troll had already began going room to room, attacking the tenants and hideously transforming them into pods and their rooms into fairy worlds full of grotesque beasts. In a final attempt to stop Torok's hostile takeover of the apartment complex, Eunice and Harry enter the troll's fairy world. Eunice is attacked by Torok and turned into a tree stump and Harry find his sister trapped in a coffin of glass a la Snow White. Suddenly Torok's great bat monster attacks, disabling Harry. When it goes after Wendy, Torok kills it, destroying his carefully constructed fairy realm. As the magic world collapses around them, Harry and his family are given a chance to escape, leaving just as the police arrive. As the police investigate the house, one of them is drawn into a remaining fragment of the fairy world, setting up for the unrelated sequel.

Frankly, I highly doubt that Rowling saw this movie and that it was a coincidence. The character happens to have the same name, and it's in a magical world. That's about as far as it goes, as far as I'm concerned. Besides, why is he suing now?