Peter Jackson 'stretched' the film license?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

There's also a doctrine of 'incidental infringement': the classic case is where a news photograper happens to catch a painting or a newspaper in a shop window in the background. Not that these 'scrolls' are exactly the same, since of course they're not accidental, and in theory even making them is an infringement: but they are similar in that hardly anyone would even notice them, even fewer of those could read Tengwar, and the bit of Akallabeth visible is only a fragment any way.

All pretty de damn minimis.

At any rate, the movie tie-in books got permission from the Estate; necessarily so, since Zaentz' rights do not extend to books.