Lawyers Explain Exactly What The Embracer Acquisition Means For Middle-earth
The Embracer Group recently bought shares in Middle-earth Enterprise, now owning the company, and therefore the rights it holds regarding the Lord of the Rings. It may seem like corporate nonsense, but this could affect the games, films, and TV series currently in production in Tolkien’s universe.
We independently asked two experts, a gaming lawyer and entertainment lawyer, to break down the Embracer press release and help us all understand exactly what they own and what they mean. René Otto is a video game lawyer at Van Iersel Luchtman and is considered to be one of the leading European video game lawyers. René has founded and leads the only full-service legal team in the Netherlands which focuses on providing legal advice and (court) representation to video game companies. Stuart Smith is a leading corporate/commercial lawyer and partner at media and entertainment law firm Simkins.
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We asked them all the important questions about the changeover, and they told us what the deal is with matching rights, what the acquisition means for the Rings of Power, and why Embracer needs to be wary of creating its own Morbius.
Ben Sledge, TheGamer: How will the acquisition affect games? For instance, EA has some kind of rights to make LotR games, and Embracer mentions Heroes of Middle-earth as a "financial interest." Is the difference for EA just that it is licensing the LotR rights from a different company?
René Otto: This company takeover normally should not affect current contracts with third parties, such as Electronic Arts. Middle-earth Enterprises still exists as a company and still is the contracting party for these third parties. The only thing that has
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