Mithalwen... you said this
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Given that The Lord of the Rings was originally published without its appendices, I wonder whether legally speaking they form a part of of the "The Lord of the Rings" for the purposes of film rights
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I believe your information is not accurate. I have a US first edition of ROTK published in 1955 and it has the appendicies as part of the book. I checked that edition before I posted this thread this morning just to make sure.
davem ... please understand that I am not finding any fault or error with Christopher putting together the SIL or finding a publisher for it. I am very glad that he did it. My point is more of a legal question based on the idea that when they bought the film rights to LOTR, everything in the appendicies was part of it. And that includes material that JRRT himself said was from The Silmarallion. When he used the term it was not really as a published book since that would not happen until after his death several years later. He was referring to it as a body of work on the First Age.
My point is this: is it not possible for a legal department to advocate that since the legally own that information in the Appendicies for the purposes of film, that they have the right to other more detailed information that JRRT had also written up until that time and referred to by name or character or event in LOTR?
I am not an attorney and would love to hear from one on this subject. But I do think it is an interesting perspective that is different than the conventional wisdom.