The Tolkien Property and Amazon have been victorious of their court docket battle with an creator who first revealed a e book titled The Fellowship of the King after which demanded $250M after claiming Prime Video had stolen the concept for its TV collection.
In court docket paperwork issued by the District Court docket of California on December 14, each circumstances introduced by Demetrious Polychron had been thrown out by Decide Stephen V. Wilson, who ordered Polychron to pay the Tolkien Property and Amazon’s authorized charges totalling round $134,000.
In 2017, Polychron penned a fan fiction sequel e book titled The Fellowship of the King, which he claimed to be the “the pitch-perfect sequel to The Lord of the Rings,” in line with the Tolkien Property legal professionals. Moderately extremely, he then commenced a $250M lawsuit towards the Tolkien Property and Amazon in April of this 12 months, claiming that Amazon’s TV collection The Rings of Energy infringed the copyright in his e book.
Wilson’s judgement threw out the claims across the Amazon TV collection and granted a everlasting injunction, which prevents Polychron from ever distributing any additional copies of The Fellowship of the King, his deliberate sequels to that e book, or some other spinoff work based mostly on the books of JRR Tolkien. He’s additionally required to destroy all bodily and digital copies of his e book and to file a declaration, below penalty of perjury, that he has complied. The decide additionally turned down Polychron’s requests to have his authorized charges paid by Amazon and the property.
Steven Maier, the Tolkien Property’s UK solicitor, stated: “This is a crucial success for the Tolkien Property, which is not going to allow unauthorized authors and publishers to monetize JRR Tolkien’s much-loved works on this manner.”
Amazon’s Lord of the Rings TV collection is the costliest TV collection of all time and a second season is within the offing.
Final 12 months, Swedish online game firm acquired Center-earth Enterprises, a division of The Saul Zaentz Firm, which owned the mental property catalogue and worldwide rights to The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit.
Lance Koonce and Gili Karev of Klaris Legislation, New York, represented the Tolkien Property.
