The lawsuit between Warner Bros. and the estate of creator J.R.R. Tolkien over the digital rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit has finally been settled, after several years.
Warner Bros. counter-sued, alleging Tolkien’s estate had limited their ability to properly promote the earlier films and potentially cost them millions of dollars in revenue.
Tolkien’s estate invoked a decades old contract to claim this constituted copyright infringement, that Warner Bros. was only authorized to create “tangible” merchandise for the series.
Per THR, the Tolkien estate and and publisher HarperCollins objected to Warner Bros.’