Demetrius Polychron, who sued Amazon and the Tolkien Estate, accusing them of stealing his ideas from Lord of the Rings fanfiction for the Rings of Power series, lost the case and is now obliged to pay the companies $134 thousand.

According to PC Gamer, Demetrius registered his fanfiction The Fellowship of the King with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2017. After that, he began sending letters to Simon Tolkien, director of the Tolkien Estate and grandson of The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien, to have him review his work.

Not receiving any answers, in 2019 he tried again. He hired a lawyer and contacted the company, offering them cooperation. After another rejection, he went so far as to bring a printout of the work to Simon Tolkien at home.

Having received no response again, he began to say that he would publish The Fellowship of the King and 6 more books in the series on his own. In 2022, he finally released the first book, and then sued Amazon and the Tolkien Estate, accusing them of using ideas from his book for the Rings of Power series.

He demanded that the companies pay him $250,000 in compensation. However, the case was dismissed, and the judge ruled the opposite: Polychron’s book infringed on the rights to the Amazon show.

The Tolkien Estate filed a counterclaim, demanding that the distribution of his book be stopped and that he be banned from publishing the next six books he planned. The court upheld this decision and ordered Polychron to pay the companies $134 thousand.

“This is an important success for the Tolkien Estate, which will not permit unauthorised authors and publishers to monetise JRR Tolkien’s much-loved works in this way,” Steven Maier, the Tolkien Estate’s lawyer, said. “This case involved a serious infringement of The Lord of the Rings copyright, undertaken on a commercial basis, and the estate hopes that the award of a permanent injunction and attorneys’ fees will be sufficient to dissuade others who may have similar intentions.”