DrunkenHobbit.com WIPO Decision

The WIPO decision in the case of The Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Tolkien Enterprises v. ECWD, Inc. caught my eye as I am a Tolkien fan.

It’s an interesting decision on some levels, but is also quite disturbing on others.

The registrant has posted a reply of sorts on the site (which hasn’t transferred / moved as yet) which raises a couple of interesting points:

DRUNKEN HOBBIT SAYS GOOD BYE – BECAUSE I CAN’T BE BOTHERED
Since the the good folks that wrote the Lord of the Rings books and Movie’s feel that the Drunken Hobbit website was a concept taken based on some Hobbit that appears in their Books and Movie’s this website will no longer be around.

I will say that if I made a decent amount of money from this website I would have gone to battle with them over this “Hobbit” claims and the Trademark they filed for and have simply to prove a point, however it is not worth my effort, time or money to do so. Unlike specific companies which claim in certain things or feel that everything is based on what they have done and accomplished I’m an honest person. Fact of the matter is, I have never seen or read one single Tolkien book of Movie ever, I am not aware of any characters or even the plot of the entire series, regardless of how successful they feel the movie is, the fact remains that ion THIS COUNTRY there are hard working people such as myself, or better yet people such as myself that do things out of fun. The Drunken Hobbit was created by me as a site about a friend of mine that Looked like a furry midget, in my world I call furry midget’s hobbit’s, not knowing that someone feels they own the word “Hobbit”, or claim to have created that word. Below you will find some information that clearly shows that no matter how large the Tolkien people and the Lord of the Rings books, movies or magazines are the fact of the matter is that Tolkien wasn’t even sure he made the word up, he just choose to trademark it. I challenge any of you to do a search for “Prior Art” and how many cases for companies claiming the rights to certain things had those lawsuits dropped from court.

Again I’m a busy guy and this website was developed for fun, not because I knew about someone else’s material, nor do I care. Honestly in my opinion which I am allowed to have in THIS COUNTRY, is that the people behind these claims truly need to find something else to put their energy into.

Enjoy some of the information below, and as for the DRUNKEN hobbit website, I’m signing off and saying Thank you for a few years of checking out my site. It’s only been in use like 2 years (all though the lord of the Rings people claim it’s been in use since 2003, the fact of the matter is there’s more information simply NOT TRUE. Again thank you to all my loyal Bookmarkers and the people that visit the Drunken Hobbit Daily, please feel free to remove your bookmarks because the site will only stay like this until I transfer the domain to them and they can do whatever they choose with it.

Funnily enough the site was being used as links site for porn sites and had this graphic at the top of the page:

If you look at the full size image you can clearly see the furry feet that feature in Tolkien’s writings …

However there is one part of the registrant’s defence that is quite interesting and that is the reference to “prior art”. Was Tolkien the inventor of the word “hobbit” or had the word been used previously?

Of course if the site had been something more “positive” then maybe the WIPO decision would have gone differently or the trademark holder wouldn’t have lodged the complaint in the first place …