"Lord of the Rings" sequel!

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

Originally Posted by Nerwen

For the second– are you sure about that? D&D has "halflings", but I can't recall "hobbit" being used anywhere but Tolkien. Certainly not in novels.

Being older than the hills has its advantages. The earliest version of D&D did indeed use "hobbits," and there was legal wrangling over it. Tolkien invented the word, and he had rights to it and its use in profit-making materials. There was also discussion about "Orc," but it was determined that there were legendary uses of the term that long predated LotR, so the game still uses it. "Halfling" was, I believe, a compromise.

Copyright in the US is guaranteed by law, but there is no fixed limit set in the original legislature, so the term keeps getting changed. There is also the matter of trademark involved, since I believe many of the names associated with LotR were trademarked by Tolkien Enterprises (which, if I recall correctly, is part of how they remain involved with movie and licensing revenues no matter what studio makes the films). Trademark laws do not work in quite the same way as copyright laws. While it would be hard to win a fair use case of copyright infringement over a piece of fan fiction, trademark infringement could be quite easily proven. It's just not worth the effort when no profit is involved. But there are distinct limits to the term of trademark, and it must be defended or it lapses. The Refrigerator Corporation discovered that (they lost theirs), and there have been close calls with the Kleenex and Jell-o trademarks as well.