Lawsuit by Tolkien Estate may halt The Hobbit

[davem]

Originally Posted by PrinceOfTheHalflings

One last thing - all bets are off when the copyright expires on the books, because then anyone will be able to make films of them, but that won't be for a while yet!

Copyright is now 'The Tolkien Trust' rather than 'JRR Tolkien' (some have suspected that's the real reason for the 300-400 changes made to LotR for the 50th anniversary edition...,not that I would indulge in such cynicism ...but

The war broke out in America at an early stage of Tolkien's literary career. He was not, at that time, as rich and famous as he soon would become. Early in 1965, Ace Books was planning to issue an unauthorised paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings. Because of the state of American copyright the publisher probably thought that this could be done with impunity. No royalty payment was, at first, offered to the author.

Tolkien's authorised American publishers, Houghton Mifflin, decided to issue their own paperback ASAP. In order to register the new edition as copyright, Tolkien made a number of changes in the text, so that it was technically a new bookhttp://miltonbatiste.tripod.com/oneisacrowd/id4.html.

), so it may not expire 70 yrs after Tolkien's death - or at all.

[PrinceOfTheHalflings]

Originally Posted by davem

Copyright is now 'The Tolkien Trust' rather than 'JRR Tolkien' (some have suspected that's the real reason for the 300-400 changes made to LotR for the 50th anniversary edition...,not that I would indulge in such cynicism ...but ), so it may not expire 70 yrs after Tolkien's death - or at all.

It still has to be measured as from when the author died. Their only hope is that more changes are made to Copyright Law to extend the term again ... maybe to 95 years or so.

I think "The Tolkien Trust" was established for tax minimisation purposes. They can't make minor changes to a work (no matter how many changes there are) and then hope for an extension in copyright on that basis.

On the other hand ... all the posthumously released works - The Silmarillion, HoME, Unfinished Tales, Sigurd and Gudrun, Children of Hurin ... well, those were all substantially edited by Christopher Tolkien, so his contribution counts for copyright purposes.

Ah ... I need a drink after writing all that. A pint and a chat with JRRT would be very welcome right now! If only...

[davem]

m'kay.... well I'm not a lawyer, but..... if the changes Tolkien made to the 1st ed text created a 'substantially different work' (even though from a reader's pov they aren't really all that great), & enabled him to register the new edition as copyright how come the changes that were made after his death by Hammond & Scull, under CRRT's authorisation, don't make it a 'substantially different work' ? If the original version no longer 'exists' as such (ie is not being published anymore), then doesn't the copyright to the new edition belong to the ones who produced the new edition? Or to put it another way, all Shakespeare's work are out of print, but if I published out an edition of Hamlet with a certain number of changes of my own - say I produced a parody, replacing the original names with names of current politicians & added a few jokes, but left the text substantially as is, wouldn't I be able to claim copyright for my adaptation, being as it is a 'substantially new work'?

If this edition of LotR is different to the pre-50th anniversary edition (one could argue by as much as the 2nd edition is different from the 1st), & that difference is down to other people, how come the copyright situation isn't affected? And if CRRT's editorship of the posthumous works establishes copyright with him rather than his father when the writings they contain are actually by his father, then I don't see how it could be easily argued that the same situation doesn't apply now to the new improved LotR.

[PrinceOfTheHalflings]

Originally Posted by davem

m'kay.... well I'm not a lawyer, but..... if the changes Tolkien made to the 1st ed text created a 'substantially different work' (even though from a reader's pov they aren't really all that great), & enabled him to register the new edition as copyright how come the changes that were made after his death by Hammond & Scull, under CRRT's authorisation, don't make it a 'substantially different work' ? .

The thing is that the 2nd ed of LOTR wasn't done to extend copyright but to confirm copyright in the USA. It turned later out that this wasn't really necessary, but it was an easy option for the publishers.

Sure, the 2nd ed has a new copyright date - 1965 instead of 1954, but that doesn't matter.

All of the amendments made since then, for example in the 50th Anniversary ed, only amount to corrections to the text. Proof reading adjustments, really. It's not like Christopher has added a chapter or anything of that sort.

Alternately, if Christopher Tolkien was to add some other material to the book - for example, adding the epilogue - you would probably end up with just that part of the book having a different copyright to the rest of the book. Making such alterations could also play havoc with future film or television adaptations - what version of the book would you own the rights to?

Let's go further with this - if Christopher T. made sufficient alterations to assert a entirely new copyright then you'd really have a different book. Call it LOTR v2.0. The original ed would be LOTR v1.0, the 2nd ed would be LOTR v1.1, the 50th anniv ed would be approx. LOTR v1.14. The v1 editions could become public domain while v2.0 remains copyrighted.

With The Silmarillion we have a different situation. Although it is composed of text written mainly during Tolkien's life it was never published until it was assembled after his death by CT and therefore he shares the copyright with JRRT. Therefore the copyright is maintained until x number of years after his death, not JRRT's.

What will be interesting is, at the time that the Hobbit and the LOTR go out of copyright, whether it would be possible to legally issue a fan-edited version of The Silmarillion that only used Tolkien's original drafts - on the basis that they should be public domain as no work by Christopher Tolkien would be involved.