Attached Link: http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1236864.htm

They Really Do Exist!! faints and crushes the red M&M

This raises a whole ton of interesting questions. One of which is: can Tolkien's heirs/Newline Cinema or whomever owns the copyright/trademark on LOTR now demand royalties or other compensation from the scientists for appropriating the term "hobbit" to describe these beings? I won't even bother to ask if they can sue over it -- heck, anybody can and will sue at the drop of a hat these days -- but would this be considered infringement? What happens when somebody else writes fiction about them, will the "Hobbits Are For Real" argument be any defense? True, the real ones don't look like the movie version, but all living creatures evolve. I'm quite certain any modern hobbits wouldn't look like ancient ones any more than we look like our primitive ancestors, a fact that is bound to occur to others. Just goes to show you, when you think you've figured it all out, along comes a stray little fact that turns the whole thing upside down. Funny, what?

Nah. Dagmath's link is irrelevant. It has no bearing on the properties concerned, and the statement is misleading as copyright is not what is concerned in relationship, but rather trademark -- which is utterly untouched. jumpin at bogeymen...

Okay then, so it doesn't come under copyright. Would it be violating/infringing on anybody's trademark? Just curious.

Message edited on: 12/05/2004 15:36

not unless you really wanna stretch the limits of imagination and give those old bones all the defining characteristics of a tolkien character and say that's what it is. Whih means we're safe. Laywers aren't supposed to be very imaginative...

"Laywers aren't supposed to be very imaginative..." LOL! Except the old-fashioned TV kind, like Perry Mason & Men Matlock! But they specialized in criminal law -- homicide, not sorting out hobbits.