LOTR, Tolkien, Copyright & Trademarks

There’s a genuinely massive commercial machine built around Middle-earth — the world, the characters, the whole mythology Professor Tolkien spent decades constructing. Most fans already sense this on some level. Indeed, if anything, given the new movies and video games on the horizon, as well as countless Lego releases, interest in Tolkien’s creations as intellectual property only seems to be growing in the 21st century. And that growth brings a fairly predictable set of legal questions along with it: who owns what, who gets to use it, and under what conditions.

Licensing is the default assumption

As you might expect, there is a bit of a legal tightrope to walk, one that is normally settled by paying the rights-holders to license the IP. In the simplest terms, if you wanted to make a LOTR movie, video game, or even an online casino slot game or board game, you’d most likely have to approach Middle-earth Enterprises for permission (and write a hefty check).

EA is a good real-world example of this in action — before it could put out The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth, the mobile RPG it announced in partnership with Middle-earth Enterprises back in May 2022 (the game itself didn’t actually launch until May 2023), it had to strike a formal licensing deal with the rights holder rather than simply borrowing the setting.

Use of Tolkien’s IP can get complicated fast

Of course, there can be more complex issues with which entity holds the rights to what – see, for example, the restrictions on Amazon’s The Rings of Power on which areas of the lore they could touch and which they couldn’t. But by and large, it’s easy to understand that if you want to delve into Middle-earth and produce some sort of media based on it, you’ll need permission.

Yet sometimes none of this applies at all. Without getting too deep into the legalese, single words and names generally aren’t protected by copyright on their own — copyright covers the expression of a creative work, not individual vocabulary. And it is broadly for that reason that we have companies like Palantir, named after the Palantír/Palantíri Seeing Stones. Palantir Technologies has operated under that name for close to two decades without any apparent pushback from Middle-earth Enterprises.

There’s a bit more nuance to it than “single word, therefore free to use.” It isn’t just that Palantir dropped the accent Tolkien used on the “i” — trademark law doesn’t really work that way. What actually matters is whether consumers would plausibly confuse the two brands. Palantir builds data-analytics and defense software; nobody’s mistaking that for a Tolkien product, so there’s no meaningful “likelihood of confusion” in trademark terms, and trademark registrations are also tied to specific classes of goods and services rather than blanket ownership of a word. A similar logic protects Anduril Industries, the US defense contractor named after Aragorn’s reforged sword — a name Tolkien fans will recognize instantly, but not one that has anything to do with elves, hobbits, or fantasy merchandise in the eyes of the law.

It’s always worth checking with a lawyer first

Here’s the contrast that makes the principle click. Say I wanted to launch a video game tomorrow called The Palantíri, built entirely around magic seeing-stones — a lawyer for Middle-earth Enterprises would probably be on the phone within the week, because that’s squarely inside the fantasy/entertainment space the IP already occupies. Now say I wanted to open a bakery called Mordor Bakeries Inc. That’s a different story; unrelated goods, unrelated market, much weaker case for confusion.

“Might” is doing real work in that sentence, though, because Tolkien’s rights holders have a track record of being litigious even outside obvious cases. Take The Hobbit, a pub in Southampton that had operated under that name since 1989. In March 2012, Middle-earth Enterprises (via the Saul Zaentz Company) sent the pub a legal threat over trademark infringement, more than twenty years after it first opened under that name. The backlash was immediate — Stephen Fry and Ian McKellen, both attached to the upcoming Hobbit films at the time, publicly criticized the move and reportedly offered to help cover licensing costs, and a Facebook campaign to save the pub gathered tens of thousands of supporters within days.

The pub survived, reportedly settling on a nominal annual licensing arrangement, and it’s still trading under that name today — though it wasn’t the last time Middle-earth Enterprises came knocking; the pub received another cease-and-desist in 2020, this time over Tolkien-themed cocktail names on its menu. Over in Australia, a fast-food chain called Lord of the Fries went through a comparable challenge and likewise kept its name.

It’s also worth knowing that Middle-earth Enterprises doesn’t sit still — its trademark filings have expanded well beyond the obvious character names over the years, covering everything from parlor games and figurines to, more recently, financial-services marks for names like RIVENDELL and EREBOR, plus hospitality-related filings for HOBBIT HOUSE and HOBBIT VILLAGE. That pattern says something useful on its own: rights holders like this one are actively building out trademark protection into new industries, not just defending the obvious entertainment turf.

So, the bottom line is that single words and short phrases are mostly okay if you are operating in an industry – basically outside of entertainment/fantasy – but you should also expect some pushback. Given how actively Middle-earth Enterprises has been widening its trademark footprint into unrelated sectors, that pushback risk is arguably higher now than it would have been a decade ago. If you’re seriously considering launching a business or brand around a Tolkien-related word, the sensible move is still a short conversation with a copyright and trademark lawyer before you commit to a name — not after a cease-and-desist letter shows up.