Tolkien Estate, Amazon Win ‘Lord of the Rings’ Sequel Copyright Lawsuit
By Movieguide® Contributor
The Tolkien estate and Amazon have won a lawsuit against a fan who attempted to write a sequel to “The Lord of the Rings.”
Demetrious Polychron, an avid fan of Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” wrote and published a “sequel” to the story, which he titled “The Fellowship of the King.” He intended for this to be the first of seven books.
“For the last three years, I’ve been doing the most obvious hardest thing in the world,” Polychron wrote, according to court documents. “I’ve been writing the obvious pitch-perfect sequel to ‘The Lord of the Rings.’”
Per the Washington Post, “Polychron wrote to the Tolkien family multiple times across several years, repeating his admiration for Tolkien’s fantasy world and his insistent desire to write its next chapter, court records state. But the excited outreach of a passionate fan ended in courtroom acrimony. In April, Polychron sued Tolkien’s estate and Amazon Studios, which produced the prequel ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,’ alleging that the high-profile television series copied his work.”
The family repeatedly warned the fan that he was infringing on Tolkien’s copyright.
“Polychron’s unauthorized sequel, ‘The Fellowship of the King,’ copied plot points and characters from Tolkien’s original series,” the Washington Post added.
In response, the Tolkien estate countersued Polychron.
“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,” Variety reported.
In addition, the fan must pay $134,637 to the Tolkien estate and Amazon.
Steven Maier, who represented the UK portion of the Tolkien estate, made a statement on the lawsuit.
“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,” he said. “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.”
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