Film Rights to First & Second Age

[davem]

Now, although I much prefer to contribute to this discussion by way of withering put downs, I did just look up Tolkien Enterprises on Wikipedia:

Tolkien Enterprises (TE), a trading name for the Saul Zaentz Company, owns the worldwide exclusive rights to certain elements of J. R. R. Tolkien's two most famous literary works; The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. These elements include the titles of the works, the names of characters contained within as well as the names of places, objects and events within them, and certain short phrases and sayings from the works.

TE licenses these rights out to other companies for use as trademarks and service marks. It also owns the rights to certain copyrightable elements of these two works, such as film and stage productions. Tolkien sold these rights to United Artists in 1968, who in turn sold them to Zaentz in 1976.