If anyone has the infinite money pool to explore such things it would be the Tolkien estate and the studios who either own or licensed the IP for The Hobbit, LotR, etc.

I'd say if he had stopped at Palantir maybe be could have a good counter argument. He's very clearly just ripping every single "evil" object, creature, whatever else he can from the books though.

I don't think there's confusion for most people over the original source of the names. He's definitely using the names to get more attention though. I feel at the very least he should be paying them some sort of licensing fee. I'm surprised they haven't already tried something. Nintendo would certainly not let someone name their evil company Bowser's Warship (I dunno, just trying to think of something close to similar). They'd at least send a C&D and review their options if the company ignored them. Maybe I'm crazy.

[+] mudpuppy@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] Justice@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I could also make a game company named after my distant cousin "Mario" and name it "Hyper Mario Land"

How would Nintendo respond in that scenario?

But either way my hypotheticals are irrelevant and not anywhere near the reality of Theil just straightforwardly lifting names from Tolkien and doing so repeatedly. They're not like common names either. Did the word Palantir exist before he published LotR? Obviously Tolkien "borrowed" (ripped off in some cases) from like Finnish mythology and others. I wouldn't expect words like "Wizard" or "Elf" to be protected in anyway. "Hobbit" though? Well, I dunno. "Palantir"? "Nazgûl" (why the fuck does Apple auto correct that spelling)?

Look, I'm feeling gross typing all this pro-corpo sounding stuff. I just want Theil to lose lots of money. However that can happen is fine with me. It's also personally annoying to me that he keeps using LotR stuff. It's cringe as fuck, and I'm pretty sure he couldn't even explain why he thinks the names fit. Although Palantir sigh does sort of fit. In a round about way anyway.