Author Demetrious Polychron who wrote, what he calls “the pitch-perfect sequel to The Lord Of The Rings” has lost a copyright case against the Tolkien estate. Not only does he have to pay $134,000 to the estate and Amazon to cover the costs of his initial lawsuit, but he’s been ordered to destroy all physical and electronic copies!
Demetrious was sued for copyright infringement by the estate of author JRR Tolkien after he first tried to sue them first. He claimed that Amazon’s TV series The Rings Of Power , which is universally loathed and mocked, infringed his own book, The Fellowship Of The King. Is this fucking guy for real?! As you would expect, his case was dismissed by a US district court, which said Polychron’s own novel had broken copyright.
The Judge ruled that all copies of The Fellowship Of The King and its sequel, The Two Trees, must be destroyed and the ruling also forces Polycron to sign a declaration confirming he’s complied. On top of this monumental case of “stupid is and stupid does”, Polychron cannot write any further books based on Tolkien’s work.
Steven Maier, the Tolkien estate’s UK solicitor said:
“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. 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.”
Basically, the Tolkien estate seems fine with people butchering Tolkien’s original works and pissing all over his legacy, as long as they pay $250M as Amazon did.
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