Credit: Amazon StudiosAmazon Studios and the Tolkien Estate are now two for two when it comes to lawsuits with an author who wrote an unlicensed sequel to the Lord of the Rings and then tried to claim that the TV series The Rings of Power infringed on the copyright to his book. According to a judge, Amazon has won a “complete victory” and dismissed both cases.
The legal rights to screen adaptations of the Lord of the Rings are a touch complicated (it took years for Warner Bros. and the Tolkien Estate to settle a lawsuit), but currently, the rights to TV adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s landmark high fantasy series are licensed by Amazon Studios. Even that is a touchy subject, as Amazon has had to make it clear that, for legal reasons, the prequel series The Rings of Power is not a continuation or direct prequel to Peter Jackson’s pair of trilogies set in Middle-Earth but its own, separate thing.
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However, one thing that was definitely not licensed by the Tolkien Estate (whose board of directors includes Simon Tolkien, the author’s grandson) was The Fellowship of the King, a novel written by author Demetrious Polychron as “the pitch-perfect sequel to The Lord of the Rings,” according to court filings.
Despite not being officially licensed, Mr. Polychron filed a $250 million lawsuit against the Tolkien Estate and Amazon Studios, claiming that The Rings of Power violated a copyright he registered in 2017.
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However, it appears that U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson does not agree. Both of Mr. Polychron’s lawsuits have been thrown out, and (among other things), the judge has ordered that Mr. Polychron cease “copying, distributing, selling, performing, displaying, or otherwise exploiting his book The Fellowship of the King…and any derivative thereof, including his planned book entitled The Two Trees or any subsequent books in the planned series.”
Furthermore, the judge ordered that all physical and electronic copies of The Fellowship of the King be destroyed, and Mr. Polychron pay legal fees for Amazon and the Tolkien Estate in the approximate amount of $134,000.
The Tolkien Estate attorney Steven Maier issued a statement (per BBC), saying:
“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.”
Inside the Magic reached out to Amazon Studios and the Tolkien Estate’s public relations for comment, but has not heard back by the time of publishing. We have not been able to contact Mr. Polychron.
Do you think that the Tolkien Estate and Amazon were legally in the right? Let’s hear some thoughts in the comments below.