HispanicBusiness

For at least the second time in a decade, Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling is being accused of plagiarism.

The latest suit was filed by the estate of late children's author Adrian Jacobs. The estate says Jacobs died "penniless" in a London Hospice in 1997, according to Reuters.

The Jacobs estate, which is calling the lawsuit "a billion dollar case," contends that Rowling stole concepts pertaining to wizards from his 1987 book "The Adventures of Willy the Wizard: No. 1 Livid Land," according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Rowling, 44, vigorously denies the claim, calling it "absurd," and saying through a spokesperson this week that she has never read the book.

In 1999, American author Nancy Stouffer sued Rowling for plagiarism, alleging that the Harry Potter books stole material from her books, "The Legend of Rah and the Muggles" and "Larry Potter and His Best Friend Lilly."

Stouffer lost the case in 2002 and the appeals three years later. She was also fined for retroactively changing pages.

The more recent case actually first surfaced in 2004, and then again in June.

Specifically, the Jacobs estate, with Paul Allen named as the trustee, alleged that Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" book borrowed from Jacobs concepts such as wizard contests and 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, according to the June article from Reuters.

Then, as now, Rowling and British publisher Bloomsbury called the claim "unfounded, unsubstantiated and untrue."

Rowling, the Bloomsbury statement went on, "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 publicised Harry Potter series."