Liens tolkienneux divers

[Druss]

Encore un exemple qui montre que lorsqu'on abuse le Tolkien Estate, on peut en subir des conséquences, même si on n'est pas le responsable. Ici Dan Smith explique pourquoi il a décidé de cesser la diffusion de ses polices tengwar, à la suite d'un problème avec une compagnie de bijoux.

https://plus.google.com/+AnnaCBelkina/posts/J9S26syWgpK

In 1996, I was urged to contact the Tolkien Estate and get their blessing - which I did. In my letter I asked for permission to distribute my Tolkien inspired fonts free of charge to Tolkien fans and scholars. They responded positively and stated that as long as my intentions were non-commercial, I had their blessings.
In 1999, "yahoo.com" bought "geocities.com" and suddenly my free website cost $5 per month. So I set-up a paypal account and added a "please donate" button to my web pages.
Over the years I have been contacted by several individuals with commercial interests, and I have always told them the same thing: "My fonts are free for use, but if you want to make a commercial Tolkien product, you need to contact the Tolkien Estate."
In 2002, I was contacted by a jewelry company in Britain about creating rings with Tengwar inscriptions. I told them the same message as above.
In 2003 they went into production and send me a small donation (which I thanked them for).
In 2014, 11 years later, I receive a cease and desist letter from the Tolkien Estate. Apparently, the British jewelry company never got permission from the Tolkien Estate to make their Tolkien products and claimed that when I accepted their small donation for my font, I was actually granting them permission to make Tolkien products. The funny part is that the British jewelry company never used any of my fonts in their products - they used a Tengwar font made by someone else!
After several correspondences, they did rescind the "cease and desist order". They will now allow me to continue freely distributing my fonts, but only if I can verify that the recipient is a "serious Tolkien scholar", and not a fan, or someone with a commercial interest. Since I don't have time to screen every font request, I have decided to remove them from my website.