Britain's boy wizard Harry Potter trounced Russia's Tanya Grotter yesterday when an appeals court in the Netherlands upheld a ban on Dutch publication of a Russian novel which judges said aped JK Rowling's best-selling book.

The Amsterdam appeals court said the similarities between Dmitry Yemets' Tanya Grotter and the Magic Double Bass and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone were too close, and upheld the view that the book infringed Rowling's copyright.

"The impression left by the Tanya Grotter story is too similar in many essential aspects to be regarded as an independent creation," the court said in a written ruling.

Byblos, publisher of the Dutch translation of the Tanya Grotter book, accepted the novel was based on Harry Potter, and said it should be considered not as plagiarism but as a "polemic that quotes from Harry Potter".