Copyright Info
Trudy S.

With the time lag in this forum (as opposed to the message boards) this information may have already been provided. Steve L. said, "However, I don't know to what extent people can do that without obtaining legal permission from whoever holds the rights to his works. After a certain period of time, though, any published work becomes public property; and I think that period may have already lapsed where LOTR is concerned.  I'm not sure. If anyone has legal knowledge concerning such matters [then there's a partial sentence that I suppose was eaten by the computer]."

I'm not a lawyer, but I did some research on the Library of Congress website and found some facts. For works being published today, the copyright limit is 70 years after the death of the author (or the last surviving author if there were more than one).

A different law applies to works published before 1978, which would include LotR even if you use the second edition. The website goes through a history of how the law was changed, which I won't go into, but the end result is that such a work can be protected for a total of 95 years (the rights first expire after 28 years, then can be renewed for another term of 67 years, and I don't think we have to worry about the Tolkien estate forgetting to renew the rights). If you take the earliest publication date (FotR in 1954), that would mean the copyright would expire in 2049. 

The website points out that this is U.S.A. law, and other countries differ, but also says that many countries have signed accords that give them at least a good degree of similarity.  Both the U.S. and U.K. have signed every accord that's come down the pike, but I'm not sure exactly how _much_ their laws harmonize.  Any Brits here who would know?

So LotR is not in the public domain and won't be for quite some time.  If you're young, you may get a chance to publish that novel based on Middle-earth after the copyright expires. Since I was "born" the same year as FotR, I'm not counting on it myself.

On some Tolkien sites, you may notice something called "Fan Fiction." That's fiction based on a work that's still under copyright protection. Legally, this writing cannot be copyrighted and no profit can be made from it. So a lot of these authors share their work with other fans for free over the internet. This applies to other "franchises," of course.  I've seen fan fiction based on Star Wars, Xena, Star Trek, and on and on.

I'm very grateful the Tolkien estate takes the copyright seriously, because it has kept Middle-earth as one of the few secondary creations that hasn't been altered by someone besides the author.  Frank Baum somehow didn't protect his rights, and other people started writing Oz books almost immediately, continuing up to the present. C.S. Lewis's rights are now owned by a publisher, who is planning to hire authors to write completely new Narnia stories. If you think JRRT purists are upset about the movies, you ought to see how CSL purists feel about those upcoming books!

Regarding movie rights, I'm 95% sure (someone correct me if I'm wrong) those rights were actually sold by JRRT himself before he died. They were sold to the Saul Zaentz company (not sure exactly how the company is titled), who still has the say over who uses them. Bakshi had to go through Zaentz, as did New Line, to get permission to make their movies. Anything you see that has "Tolkien Enterprises" on it (instead of the Tolkien estate, who still control the _books_) has received its licensing through Zaentz. This includes figurines, RPG's, etc. That's why we may see two competing LotR RPG's soon: there could be one based on the books (which would need permission from the Tolkien estate), and another based specifically on the movies (licensed by Saul Zaentz). Does all of this give you a hint as to how "intellectual property" lawyers earn their keep?

Something I learned recently has increased my respect for JRRT's insight and wisdom. When he sold the rights to Zaentz, one condition of the sale was that Zaentz would _never_ give movie rights to Disney. Disney has put out some good movies based on books, but I've yet to see one that stays even remotely close to the original story. Thank you Professor!