What an appalling load of nonsense

When the license was sold, my understanding is:

• They have the rights to major character/place names, etc. for non-book purposes. There is no requirement that they follow "lore" or "canon".
  

• There is/was dispute on whether digital rights (electronic games) was included in the original agreement.
  

I am not a lawyer, and have not seen the contract or more recent agreements post-lawsuits, so take all of this with huge grains of salt.

And to be clear, I am definitely not a fan of this line of games (Shadow of Mordor and the new one, Shadow of War).

I am just saying that there probably isn't much the Estate can do, assuming they settled the question of whether electronic games are covered.

I don't understand; there's been console games based on Tolkien for decades. They all contain content that is totally made up. I've never read anywhere that The Tokien Estate had taken earlier companies to court, so what's changed recently? The Saul Zaentz Company (or whatever it's now called) holds the rights & licenses all of these games; it doesn't have anything directly to do with The Tolkien Estate, unless some material change has occured recently.

BH

Just to add: this was probably discussed on here years ago & I was trying to find the link. Here it is:

https://www.pcinvasion.com/incgamers-tolkien-ip-license

This explains how they all work quite closely together.

BH

This is what was in the back of my mind:

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2013/ ... e-latest-tolkien-lawsuit/

"The basis of the claims is that the original agreement in which the film rights were sold only granted limited merchandising rights that cover “personal property that can physically be purchased,” and that these activities exceed the scope of those limited merchandising rights."

One of the claims was for online and downloadable video games being not covered. (I was wrong I think, in that the "Shadows" game don't fall into this bucket, as they are being sold as phyical media).

Good article to read, by the way Khamul. Thanks for sharing!

Must admit, whilst I'm not a fan of games particularly, it doesn't really bother me. Down to the lawyers, I guess, as to how far the merchandising rights extend. These kinds of things are so far from the books that I don't think there is a danger of confusion.

It all comes down to people with lots of money fighting over it, which they would no doubt do if the product was good or bad.

I'm with Stu on this one.

Nice to see that the Chairman of the Tolkien Society agrees with my views on this.

http://twoleftsticks.com/how-does-sha ... -hold-up-tolkien-scholar/

Sean Gunner told me over on Twitter that the 3rd Hobbit movie was exceptional and that I was in for a treat so I can't really trust his opinion on things Tolkien anymore. I think this new game looks incredible, I do not think it looks or feels like Middle-earth. Not my Middle-earth anyway.