The Gaming Den

Heh, Hobbit should've been allowed for D&D after all.

tussock wrote:Heh, Hobbit should've been allowed for D&D after all.

Yes, and no. While you can have the name of Hobbits, your intellectual property's contents versions of said Hobbits will have to cleave to the definitions from the Denham Tracts, not Tolkien's work. Alternately, you can use a word Tolkien also used (Halflings) instead, that seem much more "generic", and harder to enforce intellectual property over.

An other reason is that the Tolkien estate had to protect their intellectual property rights with The Hobbit. Specific intellectual property had to be protected by their rights holders. If there are examples of the holders not enforcing their rights; then their rights are more easily allowed to lapse into the public. Disney's constant pushback on the deadlines for the expiration of their IP rights for all these decades beyond Walt Disney's death; and have basically made everything after Disney's death never able to enter the public domain.

Also, this interesting explanation makes a lot of sense:

from:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbit_(w ... arlier_use [Apology for no hotlink. For some reason, using the [ url ] tag made this post blank, even trimming the post-# characters doesn't work]

wiki wrote: In the December 2003 Oxford English Dictionary newsletter, the following appears:[6]

"4. hobbit — J. R. R. Tolkien modestly claimed not to have coined this word, although the Supplement to the OED credited him with the invention of it in the absence of further evidence. It seems, however, that Tolkien was right to be cautious. It has since turned up in one of those 19th-century folklore journals, in a list of long-forgotten words for fairy-folk or little people. It seems likely that Tolkien, with his interest in folklore, read this and subconsciously registered the name, reviving it many years later in his most famous character. [Editor's note: although revision of the OED's entry for hobbit will of course take this evidence for earlier use into account, it does not yet appear in the online version of the entry.]"

Judging__Eagle wrote:An other reason is that the Tolkien estate had to protect their intellectual property rights with The Hobbit. Specific intellectual property had to be protected by their rights holders. If there are examples of the holders not enforcing their rights; then their rights are more easily allowed to lapse into the public.

"Had to" is probably not the best phrasing. They chose to. As I understand things, if they wanted to allow it to be used without losing their rights they could have licensed it for $1.

That said, I don't think there was any great loss from people having to say Halfling instead of Hobbit. All the greatest hits from Middle Earth were already public domain.