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http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/e/eldar.html
Don't Elves as we think of them now mostly come from Tolkien? Or am I wrong?
Ofc, but thing is before Tolkien introduced Human race which came into Beleriand no one called them "elves" they were simply called Quendi. Eldar is one of the big factions, you're right about that. :}
Haha, they would start whining "OMFG Elves are from Warhammer, Blizzard stole it" :}}}} I always laugh at such naive comments :}
No joke. Just trying to simplify the term pastiche. Badly, I'll give you that![]()
On the other hand, trademarks do appear where less expected.
On the subject at hand, the word "Hobbit" is actually one of many Tolkien estate trademarks. On the early days of D&D there was an actual threat to sue when the very first edition used 'Hobbit' and 'Ent'.
While these words are definitely Sir Tolkien constructions and non existing on this context until then, my personal opinion is that the trademark is abusive (and most probably against Tolkien wishes, given his strong desire for his work to be seen as the missing Britain mythos).
In any case, just wanted to mention the fact that, unfortunately, not everything is free to grab. Not even under fair use.
Considering that a great deal of the content in this thread is:
a)hard to read
b) meaningless/poorly thought out
c) both
- it's nice to see some useful information in here.
How about...
All it takes to sue anyone or any legal entity is the filing fee.
Winning a lawsuit, however, is a whole different ballgame.
Many of the generic Fantasy tropes that you see in many fantasy games nowadays (Dwarves, Elves, Wizards, Barbarians, Magic, etc) are essentially part of the Public Domain.
Think of it this way: How difficult would it be to write a "Fantasy" story that didn't involve anything you've ever seen in a fantasy story before? The general Fantasy Ideas are not copyrighted material, only the specific instances of those ideas as they were presented in the original source.
Like, if Blizzard decided to introduce Drizzt Do'Urden into Diablo 3, without the express consent of Wizards of the Coast and anyone else who holds the copyright, they can be sued. However, if they decided to make you fight a Dark Elf who just happened to wield 2 swords, and wasn't overwhelmingly similar to Drizzt, there'd be no problem. The same goes for a character like Legolas. If you add Legolas to your story without consent, BAM, lawsuit. If you add a blonde elven archer. No issue.
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