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The Asylum Is Cruisin’ for a (Legal) Bruisin’

The Asylum Is Cruisin’ for a (Legal) Bruisin’

By October 18, 2012 Movies 0 Comment

Say you run a small, cheap film company that makes knock-offs of major motion pictures — e.g., Marvel makes a movie about its Thor character, you make a movie about a different interpretation of the Norse god who wields a machine gun; Guy Ritchie makes a big-budget Sherlock Holmes film, you make a cheap-o where Sherlock fights shitty CG dinosaurs. Now, say you want to get sued. Well, you really can’t do better than this:

Yes, The Asylum is making Age of the Hobbits, despite the fact that “hobbit” has been trademarked by the Tolkien estate for decades, and they’ve been willing to sue plenty of people using the name (including a dude who had the misfortunate to name his drinking establishment The Hobbit Pub). The Asylum obviously thinks they’re safe, as they released this statement:

“Age of the Hobbits is about the real-life human subspecies, Homo Floresiensis, discovered in 2003 in Indonesia which have been uniformly referred to as ‘Hobbits’ in the scientific community. As such, the use of the term ‘Hobbits’ is protected under the legal doctrines of nominal and traditional fair use. Indeed, a simple Google search of Hobbits and archaeology reveals dozens of articles containing the term ‘Hobbit(s)’ in the title.”

You’ll notice that “2003” bit, despite the fact Tolkien more or less took over the word “Hobbit” back in 1937 when The Hobbit was first published. Now, I’m no lawyer — Ms. Robot is, but she’s taking a nap right now — but I’m pretty sure a scientific nickname (not a term, just a nickname!) that’s been used for less than a decade does not constitute the safety net The Asylum thinks it does. Moreover, The Asylum is obviously trying to confuse consumers, the thing trademarks are used to prevent. The Asylum obviously wants people to think their shitty DVD movie is somehow involved with the giant movie based on Tolkien’s classic novel, because 1) they’re releasing it around the sam time as the real Hobbit movie and 2) they put a fucking dragon in it.
Of course, maybe The Asylum is smarter than I figure, and they know they’re never going to release Age of the Hobbits, and they’re just looking for some free publicity. If so, well done there. I hope you enjoy it before the Tolkien Estate and New Line sue you back to the age of Homo Floresiensis. (Via Blastr)

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About The Author

Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.