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<blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 5496190" data-attributes="member: 15538">At the time of the lawsuit, Tolkien's estate was under the impression he had invented the word &quot;hobbit,&quot; along with the description. Hence, they were protecting, essentially, a character. However, it has since come to light that &quot;hobbit&quot; is another one of those obscure, throwaway names for a spirit or sprite, like hobgoblin, bogie, pixie, kobold, and so forth.An Ent is a giant. The tree person concept is not something that belongs to Tolkien, it's just an idea. But conceiving of an Ent as a tree-person was judged by the Tolkien Estate to be a significant enough act of authorship to be worth protecting. In retrospect, they were probably wrong. The Wizard of Oz and plenty of Silly Symphony cartoons have talking trees. However, by making TSR concede to their ownership of that representation, they did save themselves a more costly and complicated battle, fighting inch by inch against D&amp;D as a potential rival or usurper of the trademarks. As Tolkien himself planted his fortress at a disadvantage (elf, dwarf, and &quot;orc&quot; or orco/ogre already being in the public domain) I don't know if the Estate received bad advice, was simply misguided, or consciously made the decision to slow the rate at which representations from the work entered the common lexicon for a couple more decades of financial gain. If the latter, the strategy seems to have worked, as they made a bundle off Peter Jackson's movie just in time for World of Warcraft to conquer the universe.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pawsplay, post: 5496190, member: 15538"] At the time of the lawsuit, Tolkien's estate was under the impression he had invented the word "hobbit," along with the description. Hence, they were protecting, essentially, a character. However, it has since come to light that "hobbit" is another one of those obscure, throwaway names for a spirit or sprite, like hobgoblin, bogie, pixie, kobold, and so forth. An Ent is a giant. The tree person concept is not something that belongs to Tolkien, it's just an idea. But conceiving of an Ent as a tree-person was judged by the Tolkien Estate to be a significant enough act of authorship to be worth protecting. In retrospect, they were probably wrong. The Wizard of Oz and plenty of Silly Symphony cartoons have talking trees. However, by making TSR concede to their ownership of that representation, they did save themselves a more costly and complicated battle, fighting inch by inch against D&D as a potential rival or usurper of the trademarks. As Tolkien himself planted his fortress at a disadvantage (elf, dwarf, and "orc" or orco/ogre already being in the public domain) I don't know if the Estate received bad advice, was simply misguided, or consciously made the decision to slow the rate at which representations from the work entered the common lexicon for a couple more decades of financial gain. If the latter, the strategy seems to have worked, as they made a bundle off Peter Jackson's movie just in time for World of Warcraft to conquer the universe. [/QUOTE]

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