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Originally Posted by davem
But breaching it can still get you locked up.
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I'll take that as a typical form of davemian hyperbole, as copyright is mainly a civil action rather than criminal action, the recent nasty business over filesharing notwithstanding, resulting in financial fines rather than imprisonment.
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Originally Posted by davem
Tolkien spent most of his life creating his Legendarium & legally (something he was very careful to uphold) he, & subsequently his literary heirs held/hold the legal rights to the written work.
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Copyright does eventually run out, although Disney is trying hard to keep up the Mickey Mouse copyright.
However, the really interesting aspect of copyright is just what is copyrighted and what is not. Copyright covers the expression of the idea, not the idea itself. Thus, while Disney still wants to control the pictorial representation of M. Mouse, that copyright does not limit others from writing about or drawing anthropomorphic mice as long as they don't appear to mimic M. Mouse. (gotta love Wiki, for all its faults.
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Does this mean that Ents are copyrighted, but not walking trees? Obviously elves cannot be copyrighted as they existed long before Tolkien. Ditto, dwarves, trolls, etc. Hobbits might well be Tolkien's but anyone can write about short, hairy folks likely as long as they don't have long geneologies and flower names and sweet, innocent dispositions.
Now, the name "Middle earth" comes from Old English. Does Tolkien have copyright on that word? Or can anyone use it, claiming derivation from Old English? (And usually copyright is based on a minimum of eight words.) Amount, proportion, nature and purpose of the copying are all brought into consideration. Also, some jurisdictions allow for parodic and satiric adaptations of the original work, a point which would excuse BD's own REB fanfics from infringement issues (as if there weren't other myriad arguments in its defense.)
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Originally Posted by davem
Now, to the extent that the movie rights have been sold (& I'm assuming that the game rights are an extension of the movie rights) the holders can do pretty much as they will with them. However, many of us will not consider what is done by the owners of those rights to be authentic if it departs from Tolkien's creation.
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The copyright issue is really something different from your last claim here, about "authenticity", which, if I understand you correctly, implies the entire idea itself of Tolkien's Legendarium.