To anyone wondering, this doesn’t seem to be a a case of the estate pointlessly attacking fan-projects like Nintendo does. The article says the guy actually tried to publish the book and profit off of it, then he attempted to sue Amazon for infringing on his ideas… Not sure how he was expecting that to turn out
I believe he was getting sued by the estate, then decided to counter sue, which isn’t exactly uncommon in similar stories, but… yeah, I’m pretty sure the Tolkien estate can pay for better lawyers
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a summary judgment, Judge Wilson found “direct evidence of copying” and barred Polychron from further distributing the book or any others in a planned series.
The saga began in 2017, when Polychron emailed and then hand-delivered a gift-wrapped copy of his book to Simon Tolkien, a grandson of the author, at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif.
Accompanying the gift was a letter in which Polychron said that he had written “the obvious pitch-perfect sequel” to Tolkien’s fantastical trilogy about Middle-earth and that he “really didn’t have a choice,” according to court documents.
The book included major characters from “Lord of the Rings,” including Samwise Gamgee, Aragorn and Sauron, according to court documents, as well as verbatim copying of at least 15 poems or passages from the trilogy; the use of Middle-earth and dozens of other settings from the original books, described in detail; and the duplication of a central plot and structure, among other copied elements.
Judge Wilson wrote that Polychron’s lawsuit was “frivolous,” and ordered him to pay the Tolkien estate and Amazon $134,000 in lawyer’s fees.
“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 original article contains 675 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!