Harry Potter her publishers to adopt a more gender-neutral pen name in order to appeal to the male members of this age group, fearing that they would not be interested in reading a novel they knew to be written by a woman. She elected to use J. K. Rowling (Joanne Kathleen Rowling), using her grandmother's name as her second name because she has no middle name. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" was published by Bloomsbury, the publisher of all "Harry Potter" books in the United Kingdom, on 26 June 1997. It was released in the United States on 1 September 1998
Legal disputes over the Harry Potter series Legal disputes over the Harry Potter series Since first coming to wide notice in the late 1990s, the "Harry Potter" book series by J. K. Rowling has engendered a number of legal disputes. Rowling, her various publishers and Time Warner, the owner of the rights to the "Harry Potter" films, have taken numerous legal actions to protect their copyrights, and also have fielded accusations of copyright theft themselves. The worldwide popularity of the "Harry Potter" series has led to the appearance of a number of locally produced, unauthorised sequels and other derivative works, sparking efforts to ban or contain them.