Some guy is suing Tolkien and Amazon for $250 million right now. That alone takes serious courage. But what’s notable about this lawsuit is why he’s suing: copyright infringement on his Lord of the rings fanfic In particular, he argues that Amazon appropriated elements of his fan fiction for his own Tolkien adaptation TV series. The Rings of Power.
Demetrious Polychron wrote a book called a work of fan fiction set in JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth The King’s Companions, which he copyrighted in 2017 and which were later published and offered for sale, including on Amazon. Accordingly PC gamer, Polychron sent a letter to the Tolkien Estate asking for a review of the manuscript. Correct: This man asked JRR Tolkien’s grandson Simon for it unsubscribe from his fanfic. Unsurprisingly, he received no reply.
In September 2022, the month that Polychron published The King’s CompanionsAmazon also started broadcasting it is extremely expensive Lord of the rings spin-off series, The Rings of Power. Hundreds of millions of dollars called on the development of an adjustment Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Now Polychron argues that the Amazon TV show borrows elements from his novel.
Accordingly Radar online, which has viewed documents related to the lawsuit, Polychron claims that characters and storylines he created for his book “make up as much as half of the 8-episode series” and that in some cases the show is “accurate language copied” his book. However, the claims appear to be false. For example, the lawsuit allegedly points to the fact that both his book and the show feature a hobbit named Elanor, the Elanor being the daughter of Samwise Gamgee in his book while the Elanor appears in it The Rings of Power is a harfoot. Images pretending to be the lawsuit circulating online contain a variety of other circumstantial connections or similarities to support Polychron’s argument that the authors of Rings of Power Adopted ideas from his fanfiction for a story of his own.
Polychron’s April 14 copyright infringement lawsuit names Amazon and Tolkien Estate as defendants in the US District Court for the Central District of California. Polychron claims his novel is “inspired” from Lord of the rings, but is an “original” work. Nobody is convinced, not even them reviewers who has something nice to say about it. “While he is unabashedly derivative, The King’s Companions offers Lord of the rings fans a hilarious, appropriately epic return to Middle-earth,” wrote Edward Sung for IndieReader. Ouch. It doesn’t sound like the book scores points for originality, even if it’s fun to read.
At the time of writing this seems to have been Polychron’s book delisted from Amazon. my city reached out to Amazon to ask when it would be removed, but received no response at the time of publication.
While no one believes Polychron will win against Tolkien Estate, there are concerns that the lawsuit could affect negatively the legality of fanworks in general. Hopefully fanfic writers are fine as long as they don’t try to blackmail Tolkien’s grandson.
