Lawsuits
From Tolkien Gateway
This article lists most of the lawsuits or legal actions relating to J.R.R. Tolkien and his works.
Domain disputes[edit | edit source]
jrrtolkien.com[edit | edit source]
- Dispute: JRR Tolkien Estate Limited v. Network Operations Center, Alberta Hot Rods [1]
- Summary: No attempt of non-commercial use of the domain was made.
- Outcome: The Tolkien Estate wins control of the domain.
tolkien.net[edit | edit source]
- Dispute: JRR Tolkien Estate Limited v. tolkien.net [2]
- Summary: There was no attempt by the owner to create an actual Tolkien-related website, thus it was assumed the owner was hoping to profit by most likely selling the domain.
- Outcome:The Tolkien Estate wins control of the domain.
shiremail.com[edit | edit source]
- Dispute: JRR Tolkien Estate v. Tarrant Costelloe [3] [4]
- Summary: The email service was not free and thus attempting to profit from Tolkien's works.
- Outcome: The domain name expired and now just displays advertisements.
lotrfanclub.com[edit | edit source]
- Dispute: The Saul Zaentz Company v. Siarhei Chyzhevich [5]
- Summary: After the The Lord of the Rings Fan Club was shut down by Decipher, they forgot to renew the domain name, lotrfanclub.com, after expiration a pornographic snatched up the domain.
- Outcome: Tolkien Enterprises wins control of the domain.
hobbit.es[edit | edit source]
- Dispute: The Saul Zaentz Company doing business as Tolkien Enterprises v. Marc Rodríguez Negro [6]
- Summary: Not a non-commercial site.
- Outcome: Tolkien Enterprises wins control of the domain.
Image disputes[edit | edit source]
fan.theonering.net/rolozo[edit | edit source]
(Ryan Lovett)
- Date: June 14th, 2004
- Dispute: Tolkien Estate asked webmaster to remove all maps.
- Outcome: All maps were removed.
tolkienion.com & tolkien-maps.com[edit | edit source]
- Date: June 16th, 2004
- Dispute: Tolkien Estate asked website to remove material that infringes their copyrights, specifically the maps.
- Outcome: Website complied and removed maps.
lotrmaps.cjb.net & lotrmaps.middle-earth.us[edit | edit source]
(Jeroen Backx)
- Dispute: Tolkien Estate asked website to remove copyright infringing maps.
- Outcome: Website complies and shuts down.
7up.org/gecko/gallery2[edit | edit source]
(Jonatan Alvarsson)
- Dispute: Tolkien Estate asked website to remove copyright infringing maps.
- Outcome: Website complies and removes Tolkien-related maps.
isildur.com[edit | edit source]
- Dispute: Tolkien Estate asked website to remove copyright infringing maps.
- Outcome: Website complies and removes maps section.
Content disputes[edit | edit source]
merp.com[edit | edit source]
- Dispute: Tolkien Enterprises asked website to remove all material relating to ICE Roleplaying material.
- Outcome: Website complied and removed material.
esnips.com[edit | edit source]
- Dispute: The Tolkien Estate asked the website to remove PDFs of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion from their website. The Estate also asked the website to hand over information on all of the users who downloaded the books.
- Outcome: The website complied, removed the PDFs, the Estate went on to "politely and firmly" ask the downloaders to stop. [7]
shirepost.com[edit | edit source]
- Dispute: Tolkien Enterprises asked the website to remove all Tolkien-related information and cease selling their Tolkien-related coins.
- Outcome: The website complied and no longer sells Tolkien-related coins.
