Somewhat offtopic trivia, but up until 2012 in the US, you were actually allowed to print a new copy of The Hobbit. Many publishers with no relationship to Tolkien or his estate have done this. Due to a quirk in international copyright law, it had entered the public domain in the US.
A court ruling in 2012 restored copyright to the work, which is super weird since there are a lot of unauthorized copies still floating around.
Off topic but I understand that LOTR will enter the Public Domain in India, New Zealand and a a few other countries next year. I want to see if anyone does anything about it
Can't wait to see multiple new media adaptions of LOTR when this happens. Though, I doubt it will. New Zealand's tourism industry, film industry, Amazon, etc will lobby pretty hard for an indefinite copyright.
This actually raises an interesting dilema, where the original books copyright ends earlier than the copyright of a film. Does this mean that new LOTR films are still in breach of New Line Cineams copyright over the films, despite them only buying the rights from the Tolkien estate? I wonder if there are any precedents here for movies derived from creative book fiction.
I think a better comparison would be owning the original manuscript. I might own the original manuscript to The Hobbit but that doesn't mean I can publish it.
The Tolkien estate is full of shit, they have no leg to stand on. Names aren't copyrightable and the book certainly doesn't give them a trademark over these industries.
I wish that copyright law was different than it is largely because Tolkien's works would then have entered the public domain. And the opportunity to create, play, and profit in Middle-earth sounds amazing.
Kind of funny that you mentioned the Hobbit, given that half the fantasy genre is takes on LotR with the serial numbers filed off. So people have found some partial workarounds.
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