JRR Tolkien to JRR Token: You Won’t Pass

A cryptocurrency named after Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien has been blocked by the family and estate of the famous series author, who died in 1973. A panel of the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) ruled that the domain name JRRToken [dot] .com, founded earlier this August by Matthew Jensen, a Florida developer, was “deceptively similar” to a trademark owned by the Tolkien estate. WIPO has since stopped the developer operating under that name, and received a pledge to remove any infringing online content.

According to Law360, the US-based developer paid the legal costs of the property for an undisclosed amount. Tolkien Estate has recovered the JRRToken [dot] com domain name, as well as the social media accounts associated with the coin.

As noted, the JRR token was launched in August with the ominous tagline: “The One Token That Rules Them All.” Coin’s creator, a Florida man named Matthew Jensen, also sneered at an ad featuring actor Billy Boyd, who played Pippin in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and in the eventually-deleted clip, saying, “Do I think That they’re going to the moon? There and back again.”

Once the Tolkien estate learned about this token the reaction was swift. The estate took action by turning to WIPO’s arbitration process, arguing that the token infringed upon Tolkien’s trademark rights to the name. The filing claims that the token’s domain name was “specifically designed to mislead Internet users into believing that it and the website it solicits have some legitimate commercial relationship with Tolkien and his work.” Huh”.

Ultimately, the administrative panel concluded that the choice of name was deliberate because there was no way the creators “did not know about Tolkien’s works” and that they “created a website to take away the fame of these works.” Was.”

Steven Meier, solicitor for the Tolkien Estate, said, “The Tolkien Estate is vigilant to prevent unauthorized parties from taking advantage of the JRR Tolkien name and the contents of JRR Tolkien’s literary works. This was a particularly prominent case of infringement and property. Glad That it has been done on satisfactory terms.”

Internationally recognized literary works of JRR Tolkien, including hobbit And The Lord of the Rings, has been translated into 36 languages ​​and has sold an estimated 100 million copies worldwide.