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Southampton’s The Hobbit pub, which offers an Aragon cocktail, features a very nice Lord of the Rings-inspired mural in its beer garden and has “one loyalty card to bind them all” is in trouble with Hollywood. Over its name, as you might’ve guessed.
Lawyers representing the Saul Zaentz Company have been in touch, helpfully pointing out that it owns the “exclusive worldwide rights to motion picture, merchandising, stage and other rights in certain literary works of JRR Tolkien including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.”
They have asked the pub to remove all reference to the copyrighted fictional characters, lest punters get confused about who they’re giving their money to. In the pub’s defence, landlady Stella Mary Roberts says it’s been using the name for 20 years and has been “bringing people to the books and the stories who haven’t heard of JRR Tolkien.”
Stephen Fry has also given the issue a bit of his time, taking to Twitter to call it a case of “pointless, self-defeating bullying” by the Hollywood mafia.
Meanwhile, dogs, ducks and white horses are reportedly putting together a class action case against 17,500 other name-infringing drinking establishments. [BBC]
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When is the Saul Zaentz Company ever going to open a pub!? It makes sense if you’re selling the same service but this…
I’ve actually been there many times and more than once I’ve wondered how they were allowed to trade under such a name. Turns out they aren’t. Sadly, the only surprising thing for me is how long it’s taken for this to happen.
I think this is very harsh by a blatant rights-troll who have no interest in anything but making money for the rights.
However, I don’t agree with the pub using pictures from the movie etc as part of their advertising (e.g. using a picture of Elijah Wood from the film on their loyalty cards) as that’s just asking for a copyright lawsuit
unfortunately the Rights-Troll in this case is backed up by a host of Rights-Orcs and a Rights-Balrog. Yes, it looks like they have been getting away with this for years, but if they didn’t have permission then they are, legally speaking, fucked.
I wonder, do Tolkien’s relatives receive any royalties from this licensing company?
Well the tolkien estate earned royalties from the lotr films, so yes they do.
That Pubs been there for as long as I can remember.. leave em alone I say..