A writer is suing Amazon and the Tolkien Estate for copyright infringement of last year's TV show "The Rings of Power," based on the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and "The Hobbit" supplement. How could a show based on JRR Tolkien's work under license from the Tolkien Estate infringe on the intellectual property rights of an LA native named Dimetrius Polyclon?" The puzzling answer is that Polyclon ironically purchased Amazon's "Lord Of The Rings" fan fiction, " The Fellowship Of The King" on Amazon, which it claims was infringed upon.

Polykron spent several years setting the stage for this lawsuit. First, he registered the book with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2017, establishing when it was completed and giving him legal grounds to sue (without a showing of judgment by a U.S. court); according to Polychron's legal complaint, reviewed by PC Gamer, he then filed a complaint with JRR Tolkien's grandson, The Tolkien Estate (opens in new tab), explaining The Fellowship Of The King and asking him to review the manuscript. He did not respond.

Polychron was dissuaded, but here's where things get a little more involved.

In 2019, "excited about working with [Tolkien Estate] and hoping to get his book out there," Polychron hired an attorney and contacted Tolkien Estate again. According to the complaint, the attorney for the Tolkien estate "rejected the attempted collaboration the next day." Polychron then personally delivered a copy of the manuscript "to Simon Tolkien's home," and noted that he had placed a "© mark" on the manuscript.

As one might imagine, Polychron received no response to the posted manuscript, so he wrote a letter requesting the manuscript's return and notifying Simon Tolkien that he was "publishing TFOTK and a series of six more books independently."

Polychron did so and published The King's Companions in September 2022. The novel is available on Amazon (opens in new tab).

In his complaint, Polychron admits that the book was "inspired by LotR and JRR Tolkien," but nevertheless claims that The Lord of the Rings is a "completely original book and concept" that has been taken down in various ways.

In my estimation, it is more appropriate to say that Polychron's book was not inspired by "The Lord of the Rings" but based on it. The prologue is set in the Shire, and the first character is "Elanor Gamgee Gardner, daughter of Samwise and Rosie." Polychron's dedication page dedicates the novel to the "life and work" of JRR Tolkien and his son, Christopher Tolkien: "If it were not for you, this would not have happened." This is definitely a "Lord of the Rings" fanfiction.

Polychron, however, apparently intends to sue, claiming that the similarities between "The Ring of Power" and "The King's Companions" constitute infringement. His book features a hobbit character named Elanor, for example, who also appears in The Ring of Power. It is worth mentioning that the character in Polychron's book is Elanor Gamgee Gardner, a character from "The Lord of the Rings" written by JRR Tolkien. Elanor in "The Lord of the Rings" is a new character and, as one might guess, was named Elanor because it is a prototypical Hobbit name.

Polychron is demanding $250 million for its troubles, and I doubt Jeff Bezos is too worried about this.

But for non-Amazon storytellers, this kind of brazen piracy is frightening. George RR Martin, author of "Game of Thrones," is notorious for his dislike of fanfiction, and a 2010 blog post (opens in new tab) about author Marion Zimmer Bradley (opens in new tab) recounts the episode.

Copyright complaints in the gaming world are also common, whether credible or not. Here are a couple of interesting recent cases (not meant to be similar to this one): in 2021, someone sued Activision over a character in Modern Warfare, claiming that the character was first created for a movie project.

The most notable recent copyright case in gaming is between the developers of the extraction hack-and-slasher Dark and Darker and their former employer, Nexon, who claim that they are using material created while the team was still working for Nexon.Dark and Darker has been kicked off Steam for now, but the developers are still working on it (and having a lot of fun with it).

Intellectual property rights can be tricky: Even without lawsuits from fanfiction writers, the Lord of the Rings copyright situation is complicated. Amazon's contract with the Tolkien Estate did not give it the rights to adapt the main Lord of the Rings books for television, so "The Ring of Power" had to be based on an appendix; many of the rights to adapt JRR Tolkien's work are now owned by the Swedish holding company Enlighten, which continues to acquire game studios. The Embracer Group, a Swedish holding company that has been in the process of acquiring the rights, acquired Middle Earth Enterprises (open in new tab) last year. [The Lord of the Rings MMO that Amazon was going to make was canceled because of some friction between Amazon and Tencent. The game made headlines this week for being DLC in Elvish.