He had filed a civil lawsuit against Amazon and The Estate of Tolkien, accusing them of having copied from his book «The Fellowship of the King» descriptions, images and events used in the script of the Amazon Prime series «The Rings of Power»: the outcome, for the American author Demetrious Polychron, it was somewhat predictable – difficult to win a case against a giant like Amazon.
But perhaps the writer didn’t expect to see his own accusations backfire: the District Court of California summarily dismissed the lawsuit, finding that Polychron’s book itself constituted an infringement and could not be used as the basis for a compensation claim, however exorbitant – a good 250 million dollars. The book, in fact, had been widely advertised as “the perfect sequel to the Lord of the Rings”, and in the end The Estate of JRR Tolkien, the British foundation that brings together the heirs of the writer John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973), brought an action a separate lawsuit against him for copyright infringement of «The Lord of the Rings».
A case that the American writer lost, again: in the ruling issued by Judge Steven V. Wilson on December 14, the court imposed a permanent injunction preventing Polychron from distributing further copies of his book and from creating other works based on the novels by JRR Tolkien. Not only that: the judge in fact ordered the writer to destroy all physical and electronic copies of his book, and to submit a declaration, under penalty of perjury, to demonstrate that he had complied with the requirement. A full-blown “burning” of books.
The California court also awarded $134,000 in legal fees to The Estate of Tolkien and Amazon in connection with Polychron’s lawsuit, which the judge found was brought “frivolously and unreasonably.” According to the lawyers for Tolkien’s heirs in the United Kingdom, «this is a major success for The Estate of Tolkien: the copyright owners hope that the granting of a permanent injunction and legal costs will be sufficient to dissuade others who might have similar intentions.”