In 2022, Amazon Prime Video celebrated a great success with the “Lord of the Rings” prequel series “The Rings of Power”. But this was a huge thorn in the side of a fantasy author. Demetrious Polychron wanted to expand Tolkien’s world itself. His book ‘The Fellowship Of The King: The War Of The Rings’, also published in 2022, was intended as the start of a seven-part series. But Amazon has stolen a number of ideas and extensions of the canon directly from him, which is detrimental to his work. He therefore asked for $250 million. But that turned out to be seriously counterproductive.
Amazon and the estate administration of ‘Lord of the Rings’ inventor JRR Tolkien directly counterattacked. They in turn sued author Polychron. After all, he violates copyright by continuing Tolkien’s world without any permission. The countersuit has already led to retailers like Amazon removing the fantasy author’s book from their catalog. Now it’s going to get even worse for him.
An ‘unreasonable’ lawsuit is completely counterproductive
Because how Now it is reported that a California court dismissed Polychron’s lawsuit against Amazon in late summer and also ruled that Amazon and the Tolkien estate’s countersuit is justified. Polychron’s excuse that his work was not infringing because it was only inspired by Tolkien’s world was rather abruptly rejected by the court. After all, his work is completely based on the world and characters from ‘The Lord of the Rings’. The fact that he tried to offer himself to the Tolkien estate as the official writer of a sequel a few years ago may not have helped his defense strategy. The judge also described Polychron’s attempt to sue Amazon not only as “unreasonable” but also as “frivolous from the start.”
The fantasy author must now destroy all physical and electronic copies of his book “The War Of The Rings”, as well as the sequel “The Two Trees” he has written since. He is no longer allowed to distribute the book. Otherwise he risks a heavy fine.
He is also asked to pay immediately. Because he has to pay Amazon’s lawyers and the Tolkien estate. The court has set an amount of $134,637 for this.