Middle-earth Enterprises – Wikipedia
Middle-earth Enterprises, ursprünglich als Tolkien Enterprises gegründet, hält und vermarktet weltweit die Rechte an J. R. R. Tolkiens Werken Der Herr der Ringe und Der Hobbit. Sitz ist Berkeley, Kalifornien. Ursprünglich als Unternehmen (gemäß dem amerikanischen doing business as) der The Saul Zaentz Company gegründet, gehört sie seit 2022 zur schwedischen Embracer Group.
Middle-earth Enterprises verfügt über die Rechte an den Titeln der Bücher, den Namen der Figuren, Orte, Gegenstände und Ereignisse sowie einzelnen Zitaten und Ausdrücken. Die Gesellschaft verkauft Lizenzen an diesen Rechten an Unternehmen aus allen Medienbereichen, die Werke mit Bezug auf das Tolkiensche Universum veröffentlichen möchten.
Tolkien Estate - Wikipedia
The Tolkien Estate is the legal body which manages the property of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien, including the copyright for most of his works. The individual copyrights have for the most part been assigned by the estate to subsidiary entities such as the J. R. R. Tolkien Discretionary Settlement and the Tolkien charitable trust. The various holdings of the Tolkien family, including the estate, have been organized under The Tolkien Company, the directors of which were Christopher Tolkien until August 2017 and his wife Baillie Tolkien, and J. R. R. Tolkien's grandson Michael George Tolkien. The executors of the estate proper were Christopher Tolkien (died 16 January 2020[1]), who was sole literary executor, and (succeeding J.R.R. Tolkien's lawyer Frank Williamson), Cathleen Blackburn of Maier Blackburn,[2] who has been the estate's solicitor for many years.
Exclusive worldwide rights to motion picture, merchandising, stage and other rights in certain literary works of J. R. R. Tolkien including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were sold by Tolkien himself to United Artists in 1969, reportedly for a very small amount,[3][4] and are currently owned by Middle-earth Enterprises (formerly Tolkien Enterprises), inc., a company controlled by Saul Zaentz until his death in 2014.[5]