Tag: lawsuit

Warner Brothers And Tolkien Estate Settle $80 Million Lawsuit

After five years of litigation, Warner Bros. and the estate of author J.R.R. Tolkien have announced in court that they have amicably resolved a fight over the digital exploitation of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Some back history on the suit, back in 2012 J.R.R. Tolkein’s estate and publisher HarperCollins Took Warner Bros, New Line Cinema, and Saul Zaentz Company to court, as the duo insisted that the trio had breached their contract and infringed on the Lord Of The Rings rights. New Line Cinema are the subsidiary studio of Warner Bros. that produced the Lord Of The Rings films, while Saul Zaentz has owned the rights to J.R. R. Tolkein’s Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings books since 1976.

Rather than this dispute being about any of The Hobbit or Lord Of The Rings films, Tolkein’s estate and HarperCollins were instead furious that the studios had used the characters in a variety of other endeavors, which included video games or online slot machines that are popular in virtual casinos you can find at sites like 4dno.co online. For reputable slot machine games, you can always rely on sbobet.

Warner Bros. flipped the table on Tolkein and HarperCollins when the studio decided to countersue, accusing the other companies of breaking the contract themselves. It was a basic legal mess.

Fast forward 5 years and here we are with an end to the legal battle, Terms haven’t been publicly disclosed and the countersuits were also settled by the agreement. I reached out to Warner Brothers for a statement and they responded with

“The parties are pleased that they have amicably resolved this matter and look forward to working together in the future.”

Turbine Settles Treehouse Avatar Technologies Lawsuit

Turbine has settled a lawsuit brought by little-known company Treehouse Avatar Technologies for infringing on US Patent 8,180,858. Specifically, they were accused of using a  “method and system For presenting data over a network based on network user choices and collecting real-time data related to said choices”. As a part of the agreement, pending litigation between Treehouse Avatar Technologies and Turbine will be dropped. This entire situation has been very strange from the start. Let’s put aside for now that “presenting data over a network based on network user choices and collecting real-time data related to said choices”  is written so broadly as to describe half of what happens on the Internet (ever gotten an online insurance quote?). It takes very little research to come to the following conclusions:

  • Treehouse Avatar Technologies is owned by Wi-LAN Inc., which describes itself as “An IP licensing company built on a rich history of innovation”. In other words, they make money by looking for people to sue.
  • Treehouse Avatar Technologies sent threatening letters to several small game development companies earlier this year for the same alleged infringement.
  • Treehouse Avatar Technologies has not proceeded with litigation against the smaller companies, where a settlement would likely not be as large, nor have they filed suit against any huge software developers such as Sony, Bllizzard or Turbine parent company Warner Brothers, where lawyers are more a-plenty.
  • The patent in question was filed in 2012, while both games accused of infringement (DDO and LOTRO) were launched several years prior.

It would appear (to this non-lawyer, anyway) that Turbine was the victim of a broken US patent system and chose to settle rather than let the lawsuit carry on. I am a little curious as to why WB did not chose to fight this harder, being that it could encourage other holders of broad technology patents to bring forth litigation, but perhaps they were somewhat handcuffed by not being specifically named in the lawsuit.

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Braxwolf Stormchaser