The guy who sued Amazon for infringing on his Lord of the Rings fanfic takes a massive L, now owes $134,000 to the Tolkien Estate
Remember the guy with the balls so big he sued Amazon and JRR Tolkien's grandson, claiming they infringed on his Lord of the Rings fanfic with the Rings of Power TV series? In a shocking turn of events that no one (except literally everyone) saw coming, he lost badly and now owes the Tolkien estate $134,000 in legal fees.
The whole thing began back in 2017 when Demetrious Polychron registered his book, «The Fellowship of the King,» with the US Copyright office. He then sent a letter to Simon Tolkien, director of the Tolkien Estate and grandson of Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien, describing the book and requesting a review of the manuscript.
After receiving no response, he hired a lawyer in 2019 and contacted the Tolkien Estate again with another proposal to collaborate on the project. The estate quickly said «no,» at which point he personally delivered a copy of his manuscript to Simon Tolkien's home for consideration.
When that also went ignored, he informed Tolkien that he intended to «publish TFOTK, and an additional six book series, independently.» And so he did in September 2022, right around the time The Rings of Power first aired. Shortly after that Polychron filed his lawsuit, claiming that The Rings of Power took ideas from The Fellowship of the King and demanding $250 million in compensation.
It all sounds quite silly, but as we noted when Demetrious filed his lawsuit, this sort of complaint can be a real headache, especially for writers who don't have the resources to go to war in a courtroom. Back in the days of Usenet and BBSes, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski had (and has) a well-known zero tolerance policy against fans posting story ideas for fear that someone would try to claim ownership
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