We have been unable to confirm a report that Sierra On-line, a division of Torrance, California based Havas Interactive, one of the top three PC software publishers in the world, has filed a lawsuit against the Saul Zaentz Company in California.
Xenite.Org has made an inquiry and hopes to get confirmation or an official company denial of the existence of the lawsuit, which purportedly has been filed in Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland, CA. The lawsuit case number, posted on an Internet message board, is alleged to be 825705-9. The anonymous posting claims that Sierra On-line is the plaintiff and The Saul Zaentz Company, Inc. is the defendant.
Havas is currently the licensee for a massively multiplayer online game based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth. The license was granted to Sierra just prior to Christmas 1997, at which time Peter Jackson had not yet formally announced his intention to make movies based on Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, although rumors were flying around the Internet that he might be involved in such a project.
The Sierra license seems to have restricted them from marketing a game in association with any future movies yet to be contracted, and thus they began pursuing rights to an online game earlier this year when merchandising rights for Jackson’s three-film project started hitting the auction block.
Unconfirmed rumors of a lawsuit have been circulating the Internet before now, but this is the first time that any plaintiff has been alleged. The anonymous source says only that depositions are currently underway.
The Saul Zaentz Company, Inc. licenses LOTR-related rights through its Tolkien Enterprises division, which handles all merchandising and film rights associated with J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
Tolkien sold the rights through his publisher to United Artists in the mid-1960s, and Zaentz later acquired the rights in the 1970s. He set up Tolkien Enterprises and soon licensed a television special based on “The Hobbit” to Rankin/Bass, popular Saturday morning cartoon show producers.
Zaentz also financed an animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings which was produced and written by Ralph Bakshi, who had developed the rotoscoping technique whereby animated scenes and characters were painted over footage of live actors. John Huston provided the voice for Gandalf in the ill-fated movie, which was not well-received.
Rankin/Bass followed their production of “The Hobbit” with an animated television special adapted from “The Return of the King”, but it was not as well received as the “Hobbit” special had been. All three productions are now available on videotape, though many Tolkien purists are dissatisfied with them. Bakshi recently blamed much of the failure for the original LOTR film on United Artists.
Xenite.Org has been following licensing issues relating to Jackson’s film project in past articles, such as Middle-earth.Com Web site IP address confusing curious gamers, fans and Toy Vault not talking about LOTR action figures license.
