Amazon Sued Over Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Copyright Infringement. A fanfic author is suing Amazon for “ripping off” his Lord of the Rings fanfiction.
A new shade of controversy has been brought to the Amazon Prime original series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. According to PCGamer, a fantasy author named Demetrious Polychron is suing both Amazon and the Tolkien Estate for copyright infringement. Here is the full rundown.
The chronicles for this lawsuit start in 2017. Polychron penned an original Lord of the Rings fanfiction titled “The Fellowship of the King” and registered it with the US Copyright Office. He then sent a letter to J.R.R. Tolkien’s grandson, Simon Tolkien, who is also the director of the Tolkien Estate. Polychron’s reason for this was to have his manuscript reviewed, but he got no response.
In 2019, Polychron hired an attorney to contact the Tolkien State a second time. His hopes were to establish a collaboration with the estate. But according to Polychron’s attorney, the Tolkien Estate’s attorney “rebuffed any attempt at collaboration the very next day.” Polychron responded to this by personally delivering a copy of the manuscript to Simon Tolkien’s home, including “the © symbol” on the manuscript. Polychron received no response from the dropped-off manuscript.
Two rejections down, Polychron wrote another letter to Simon Tolkien informing him that he would be publishing the manuscript independently, followed by an additional six-book series. Polychron published “The Fellowship of the King” on September 2022 on Amazon, the same month that Rings of Power premiered on Prime Video.
According to PCGamer, Polychron fully admits in his complaint that his book is “inspired by Lord of the Rings and J.R.R. Tolkien” but also claims that it is still a “wholly original book and concept” that Rings of Power still takes from. Indeed, by the synopsis alone there are a few notable parallels. Lead female hobbits on a journey with a wizard, and a great conflict centered around the actual Rings of Power.
Polychron is demanding $250 million for the trouble. But the odds are against him. Fanfiction has always had a rocky relationship with studios and creators. One notable situation is the Mists of Avalon author, Marion Zimmer Bradley. Bradley encouraged fan fiction of her books, but stopped when one such fan fiction author demanded co-authorship of an at-the-time unpublished manuscript that bore similarities to one of their stories. Bradley shelved the manuscript indefinitely and ceased all encouragement of fan fiction of her stories. Her incident is what many fantasy authors, like George R.R. Martin, cite when fans come forward with fan fiction ideas or requests. There are also authors that take legal action against fan fiction writers, Anne Rice was notorious for taking legal action against anyone who would publish original stories with her characters on websites like fanfiction.net. This would lead to such sites not allowing fiction of her characters at all.
Because of this, it’s unlikely that this particular lawsuit will go anywhere. While Polychron did indeed register his work with the US Copyright Office, that doesn’t give him the legal ground to the story. After all, Polychron’s Elanor Gamgee is Samwise Gamgee’s daughter, a Tolkien original character who made an appearance in the original books. He also doesn’t own the concept of the Rings of Power, or any War of the Rings. Hopefully the case can be settled quietly, and without a legal war in our universe. Otherwise, Polychron is facing a dragon of his very own…
