JRR Tolkien
Demetrious Polychron ordered all copies of The Fellowship of the King to be destroyed after claiming that the Amazon prequel infringed his copyright
Monday, December 18, 2023, 10:15 p.m. GMT
A Lord of the Rings fanfiction author has lost a copyright battle over the publication of his own sequel to the popular series after launching a counterproductive legal battle against the estate of JRR Tolkien.
US-based author Demetrious Polychron published what he called the “absolutely perfect” sequel to The Lord of the Rings in 2022, titled The Fellowship of the King. He planned for the book to be the first of a seven-part series inspired by the franchise.
But the following April, Polychron attempted to sue the Tolkien estate and Amazon over the spin-off TV series “The Rings of Power,” which he said infringed the copyright on his book. A California court dismissed the case after the judge ruled that Polychron's text actually infringed Amazon's prequel, released in September 2022.
The Tolkien estate then filed a separate lawsuit against Polychron, demanding the destruction of all physical and digital copies of The Fellowship of the King and a permanent injunction to prevent further distribution of the fan fiction series.
The US court also awarded the Tolkien estate and Amazon legal fees totaling $134,000 (£106,000) in connection with Polychron's lawsuit.
Judge Wilson, who issued the order, called Polychron's original claim for copyright protection “unreasonable” and “frivolous” because its work was based entirely on characters from “The Lord of the Rings.”
The estate's British lawyer, Steven Maier of Maier Blackburn, said: “This is an important victory for the Tolkien estate in not allowing unauthorized authors and publishers to monetize the popular works of JRR Tolkien in this way.”
“This case involved a serious infringement of The Lord of the Rings copyright, committed on a commercial basis, and the Estate hopes that the issuance of an injunction and legal fees will be sufficient to protect others who may have similar intentions “To stop it.”
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