He also paid the Tolkien estate’s legal fees. Matthew Jensen said he chose the name just to be humorous, but the WIPO said he failed to demonstrate that. “The introductory header on the website homepage ‘One Token That Rules Them All’, referencing the famous phrase ‘One ring to rule them all’ … produces a humorous difference in order to invoke the desired effect of a parody,” the developer argued, according to the WIPO’s summary of its argument. Jensen sought to defend his crypto by arguing that it was just a parody meant to be funny. Gameplay is the same as the first game with some tweaks and improvements. Tolkien Lord of the Rings universe and turns them into RTS campaigns. The events in these games take some of the lesser-detailed events in the J. “This was a particularly flagrant case of infringement, and the estate is pleased that it has been concluded on satisfactory terms,” the Tolkien estate’s UK lawyer, Steven Maier, said in a statement to Bloomberg. The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II. Jensen also paid the estate’s legal costs, the estate said. The World Intellectual Property Organization ordered Jensen to discontinue the crypto. The WIPO ordered Jensen to cease operations under the name and delete all infringing content, including social media accounts and websites. “There is no doubt that the respondent was aware of Tolkien’s works and created a website to trade off the fame of these works,” the panel said in its decision. REUTERSīut a panel from the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization ruled on Tuesday that the digital token was set up for commercial gain and deemed it “confusingly similar” to the trademark already owned by the Tolkien estate. It was set up by Matthew Jensen a Florida developer. The cryptocurrency was endorsed by Billy Boyd who played Pippin. The reference to Saruman refers to the leader of an evil army in the trilogy. Cryptocurrency is literally a decentralized network.”
It was widely promoted and even came with a video endorsement from Billy Boyd, who played Pippin in the “Lord of the Rings” films, in which he claimed that “Saruman was trying to unify Middle Earth under centralized rule whereas the fellowship wanted decentralization. The coin, called “JRR Token,” was set up by Florida-based developer Matthew Jensen and launched in August 2021. Execs from Coinbase, other crypto firms to testify before CongressĬrypto-keeper picks up Central Park spread for $3.5MĮthereum nears fresh all-time high as bitcoin lagsĬryptocurrency Shiba inu pops 30 percent after listing on Kraken exchangeĪ cryptocurrency named after the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy was deemed a trademark violation and barred from operating on Tuesday after the estate of author JRR Tolkien took the digital token’s creator to task.