Tolkien Estate

The Tolkien Estate is the legal body which manages the property of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien, including the copyright for most of his works. The individual copyrights have for the most part been assigned by the Estate to subsidiary entities such as the J. R. R. Tolkien Discretionary Settlement and the Tolkien charitable Trust. The various holdings of the Tolkien family, including the Estate, have been organised under The Tolkien Company, the directors of which are Christopher Tolkien, his wife Baillie Tolkien, and J. R. R. Tolkien's grandson Michael George Tolkien. The executors of the Estate proper are Christopher Tolkien, who is sole literary executor, and (succeeding J. R. R. Tolkien's lawyer Frank Williamson) Cathleen Blackburn of Maier Blackburn, who has also been the Estate's solicitor for many years.

The lawsuits below refer to an entity entitled Fourth Age, Ltd. which was formed in November 2011. Although court records do not reflect this, according to UK corporate records Fourth Age, Ltd. changed its name on February 21, 2013, to Tolkien Estate, Ltd. Its directors include Tolkien family members Baillie Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, Priscilla Tolkien, Simon Tolkien and Michael George Tolkien, as well as the Tolkien Estate attorney, Steven Andrew Maier.

Exclusive worldwide rights to motion picture, merchandising, stage and other rights in certain literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were sold by J.R.R. Tolkien himself, to United Artists in 1969, and are currently owned by Middle-earth Enterprises (formerly Tolkien Enterprises), inc., a company controlled by Saul Zaentz until his death in 2014.

United Artists is reported to have paid Tolkien just over £100 000. It is often repeated that Tolkien sold the rights for a 'pittance' in order to pay a tax bill, the sum he was paid was approximately equivalent to £1,377,000.00 to £3,842,000.00 in 2015 and in addition to it he retained a 7.5% royalty interest in any future adaptation (transmitted to the Tolkien Estate on his death).

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