Film Rights to First & Second Age

[Sauron the White]

davem ... thank you for providing that list. I did access it and it says this right at the top

The list was on their website some years ago and is by no means official.

So it may or may not mean anything as it pertains to this discussion.
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WCH -

I hate it when otherwise good discussions come down to the old definition of terms. I remmeber my years on the debate team in college where they taught us that defining terms in your favor was one of the the easiest way to win a debate.

Despite our earlier exercise where it became very very clear that the film rights held by Zaentz and New Line and the film rights held by the Estate could well involve exactly many of the same things, you still insist that

No, StW, there are no overlapping rights. There may be bifurcated rights, which are a different thing.

It would have been a positive step towards furthering your position if you could have explained what you believe the two are and why they are different. But you simply made the statement like so much being handed down from On High. Which is of course your right.

So allow me to take out my trusty three volume copy of Websters Third International Dictionary (1981) and quote for you regarding the word OVERLAP as found on page 1,608.

among the offerings in a long list of offerings are

to extend over and cover a part of
to have something in common with
coincide in part with
to occupy the same area in part with

English is my first language. Heck, its my only language. I understand what overlap means and it applies perfectly here.

The only way it would not be if one of your A, B, C, options were true and UA was granted exclusive rights to everything from cover to cover of LOTR. Then could could make a case that it is the Tolkien Estate itself which has no right to use any of those things and in that case, an absence of rights on their part would mean no overlap as I claimed. I do find it hard to imagine that would have occured. However, I am not taking that position here without detailed knowledge of that legal arrangement.

My entire argument is based on the assumption that Zaentz and New Line own rights to the things in the Appendicies and the Estate owns the rights to what is in the book THE SILMARALLION. If someone can show factual information that shows either party does not have these rights, then my assumption changes.

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Mithalwen .... the absence of the index in the First Editions of LOTR is true as you discovered. It does not however have and impact on my argument regarding these rights.