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Tag: Tolkien Estate

  • ‘Lord of the Rings’: Amazon and Tolkien Estate Win Copyright Lawsuit Over TV Show, Copycat Book

    ‘Lord of the Rings’: Amazon and Tolkien Estate Win Copyright Lawsuit Over TV Show, Copycat Book

    Amazon and the Tolkien estate have emerged victorious in a multi-pronged legal battle over “The Lord of the Rings” franchise.

    In April author Demetrious Polychron published a book called “The Fellowship of the King” which he claimed was a sequel to “The Lord of the Rings.” He planned for the book to be the first in a seven-part series.

    The author then filed suit against both Amazon and the Tolkien estate, claiming the streaming series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” had borrowed from his sequel and infringed his copyright.

    It can now be reported for the first time that a California judge summarily dismissed Polychron’s lawsuit with prejudice in August.

    The Tolkien estate then countersued the author for infringing on their copyright. A U.S. district judge found in the estate’s favor this fall, granting them a permanent injunction to prevent Polychron from “copying distributing, selling, performing, displaying or otherwise exploiting” his book or its sequel, titled “The Two Trees.” The author was also ordered to destroy all physical and electronic copies of the works.

    Bringing the case to its final conclusion, a California judge has now handed down a costs order, instructing Polychron to pay $134,637 in attorney’s fees to both Amazon and Tolkien. In making the order, Judge Steven V. Wilson noted the “fantasticality” of the Polychron’s claim for copyright protection given his book is entirely based on characters in “The Lord of the Rings,” calling it “unreasonable” and “frivolous from the beginning.”

    Lance Koonce and Gili Karev of New York firm Klaris Law represented the Tolkien estate in the litigation while Steven Maier of Maier Blackburn handled matters for the estate in the U.K.

    “This is an important success for the Tolkien Estate, which will not permit unauthorized authors and publishers to monetize JRR Tolkien’s much-loved works in this way,” said Maier. “This case involved a serious infringement of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ copyright, undertaken on a commercial basis, and the Estate hopes that the award of a permanent injunction and attorneys’ fees will be sufficient to dissuade others who may have similar intentions.”

    The copyright around “The Lord of the Rings” franchise is particularly fraught with most of the rights for “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “The Hobbit” residing with Swedish gaming group Embracer, who bought them from the Saul Zaentz Co for $395 million last year.

    The Tolkien estate retains some carve-out rights in those properties, including television series of eight or more episodes (which is how they made “The Rings of Power” with Amazon) as well as owning other Tolkien works.

    K.J. Yossman

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  • Lord of the Rings Fanfic Writer Sues Amazon, Tolkien Estate For $250M

    Lord of the Rings Fanfic Writer Sues Amazon, Tolkien Estate For $250M

    Some guy is currently suing Tolkien and Amazon to the tune of $250 million. That alone takes serious bravery. But what’s notable about this lawsuit is the reason he’s suing: Copyright infringement over his Lord of the Rings fanfic. Specifically, he’s arguing that Amazon lifted elements of his fan-fiction for its own Tolkien adaptation TV series, The Rings of Power.

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    Demetrious Polychron wrote a book, a work of fan-fiction set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, called The Fellowship of the King, which he copyrighted in 2017 and which later were published and made available for sale, including on Amazon. According to PC Gamer, Polychron sent a letter to the Tolkien Estate asking for a manuscript review. That’s right: This man asked J.R.R. Tolkien’s grandson Simon to sign off on his fanfic. Unsurprisingly, he did not get a response.

    In September of 2022, the month that Polychron published The Fellowship of the King, Amazon also began airing its extremely expensive Lord of the Rings spin-off series, The Rings of Power.  hundreds of millions of dollars on developing an adaptation called Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Now, Polychron is arguing that the Amazon TV show lifts elements from his novel.

    According to RadarOnline, which has seen documents pertaining to the suit, Polychron alleges that characters and storylines he created for his book “compose as much as one-half of the 8-episode series,” and that in some cases the show “copied exact language” from his book. However, the claims seem spurious. For instance, the lawsuit purportedly points to the fact that both his book and the show feature a hobbit named Elanor, with the Elanor in his book being the daughter of Samwise Gamgee, while the Elanor featured in The Rings of Power is a Harfoot. Images purporting to be the lawsuit circulating online include a host of other circumstantial connections or similarities to back up Polychron’s argument that the writers of Rings of Power lifted ideas from his fanfic for their own story.

    Polychron’s lawsuit for copyright infringement, filed on April 14, names Amazon and the Tolkien Estate as defendants in the U.S. District Court For The Central District of California. Polychron claims that his novel was “inspired” by LOTR, but is an “original” work. Nobody is convinced, not even the reviewers who had kind things to say about it. “While unabashedly derivative, The Fellowship of the King offers LOTR fans a fun, appropriately epic return to Middle-earth,” wrote Edward Sung for IndieReader. Ouch. It doesn’t sound like the book scores any points for originality, even if it’s a fun enough read.

    At the time of writing, it appears that Polychron’s book has been delisted from Amazon. Kotaku reached out to Amazon to ask when it was removed, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

    While no one believes that Polychron will win against the Tolkien Estate, there are concerns that the lawsuit might negatively impact the legality of fanworks in general. Hopefully, fanfic writers will be fine as long as they’re not trying to extort Tolkien’s grandson.

    Sisi Jiang

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