Tolkien Estate and Warner Bros. Settle Lawsuit Over Licensing

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From The New York Times:

Warner Bros. and the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien have settled an $80 million lawsuit over the digital merchandising of products from “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit.”

“The parties are pleased that they have amicably resolved this matter and look forward to working together in the future,” Warner Bros. said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

The lawsuit, filed in 2012 by Mr. Tolkien’s estate, claimed that Warner Bros. was in breach of contract and also violating copyright infringement for merchandising characters from Mr. Tolkien’s books — and the subsequent successful film adaptations — beyond the scope of what was agreed to when the rights were sold in 1969, causing harm to Tolkien’s legacy.

. . . .

The lawsuit said that the estate had only granted the right for Warner Bros. to sell “tangible personal property,” giving as examples “figurines, tableware, stationery items, clothing and the like.” It said it did not grant “electronic or digital rights, rights in media yet to be devised or other intangibles such as rights in services.”

Link to the rest at The New York Times

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4 thoughts on “Tolkien Estate and Warner Bros. Settle Lawsuit Over Licensing”

    • I think that Palantir Technologies would have to be very explicit that they were “linking” to the LOTR. They acknowledge that the word is in popular modern mythology – but also that they derive it from probably the same place that Tolkien did – medieval Latin (specifically, that prevalent in Britain).

      Actually, I probably wouldn’t want to associate myself with the LOTR palantiri – one was in the control of pure evil (Sauron), one was in the control of a man corrupted to evil (Saruman), and the third one mentioned drove a good man (Denethor) mad.

      Come to think of it, Sauron used his control of the Palantir “media” to corrupt the one and drive the other insane. Very early use of “fake news”…

      • http://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/news/2015/04/16/peter-thiel-has-founded-at-least-five-lord-of-the.html

        “The UpTake: It turns out Peter Thiel has taken great inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” series. Considering the huge amounts of cash flowing through these five companies, lets just hope he was mostly inspired by Rivendell’s favorite wizard Gandalf, not the palantir-wielding Saruman.

        Here they are in order of founding date, with a brief description of what they do and what their name means in the Tolkien universe:

        Palantir: Since 2004 Thiel’s Palantir has been building big data products use in a wide range of industries, from law enforcement to disease response. This company, with its $1 billion in venture capital, according to Crunchbase, was named after magical “seeing stones” that functioned as communication devices across great distances.

        Rivendell One LLC: Little is known about this company, first discovered, along with Lembas in 2012 in an SEC document when Thiel sold most his shares in Facebook. Considering that Thiel was the first outside investor in Facebook way back in 2004, that makes both of these companies among the oldest of the five. Rivendell is an Elven outpost in Tolkien’s fictional Middle-Earth.

        Lembas LLC: The second of two companies Thiel used to invest in Facebook, this investment firm was named after a tasty Elven bread, a bite of which is capable of sating one’s appetite.

        Valar Ventures: Founded in 2010, according to Crunchbase, this venture capital firm, which has raised $100 million and focuses on global companies, most recently the Number26 round announced today. Valar were 15 ancient spirits or gods who lived in Tolkien’s mythical universe.

        Mithril Capital Management: Based in San Francisco, this investment firm with $540 million in funds, was founded in 2012 to specialize in large-scale economics in financial sectors. Mithril is the lightweight metal stronger than steal which was fashioned to create the main character of the Hobbit, Bilbo’s chain mail vest.

        According to a 2011 New Yorker report, Thiel read The Lord of the Rings, “again and again” as a teenager. This should come as no surprise, but it was his favorite book.”

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