An author is suing Amazon and The Tolkien Estate for what he claims is copyright infringement in The Rings of Power, last year's TV show based on the appendices of The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit. How could a show based on JRR Tolkien's work under license from The Tolkien Estate violate the intellectual property rights of some guy from LA named Demetrious Polychron? The perplexing answer is that Polychron published—on Amazon, ironically—a work of Lord of the Rings fanfiction called "The Fellowship Of The King," and that's what he claims has been infringed upon.
Polychron set the stage for this lawsuit over several years. First, he registered the book with the US Copyright Office in 2017, which establishes when it was completed and gives him the legal basis to sue (though it doesn't indicate any judgment about his ownership). He then sent a letter to JRR Tolkien's grandson and the director of The Tolkien Estate, Simon Tolkien, describing the book and requesting a review of his manuscript. He got no response.
