Readers here shouldn’t need to be reminded that the Tolkien Estate, through its company Middle-Earth Enterprises, is known to be extremely aggressive with its enforcement of intellectual property over anything remotely to do with The Lord of the Rings. The estate appears to operate under the notion that it has control over words via trademark law that it absolutely does not. And, where it does have those rights, it enforces them in draconian ways.
And that enforcement has international reach, too. The most recent example of this would be the Tolkien Estate working hard to block the trademark of a food truck in New Zealand whose owner wanted to call it “Lord of the Wings.”
The owner of a food truck who hoped to call it “Lord of the Wings” has been turned down by the Intellectual Property Office after the owner of the Tolkien estate’s rights objected to the name. In June 2021, Jesse Holmes sought to register Lord of the Wings as a trademark for a food truck, separate from the global food chain Lord of the Wings, whose closest restaurant to New Zealand is in Australia.
Per comments from Holmes himself, the idea for the name had nothing to do with Tolkien’s works, nor the movie. It was instead to denote royalty and lordship. I have seen nothing in any of the reporting to indicate that this had to do with anything other than the name of the food truck. The truck wasn’t going to be themed after the books or films. There wasn’t going to be any trade dress or vehicle wraps harkening back to those works of fiction. There wasn’t to be a flavor of chicken called “One wing to rule them all.”
But the IPO bit and rejected the name anyway, long before any examination over the potential for actual customer confusion could be conducted.
In IPONZ’s recently released decision, Ruvini Rendle, assistant commissioner of trademarks, agreed with the Tolkien franchise that the marks for the branding were too similar.
“I consider that use of Lord of the Wings by the applicant is likely to cause a substantial number of persons in the relevant market to wonder whether the Lord of the Wings mark applied in relation to the provision of food and drink services is connected or associated with the opponent,” the decision said. “The level of similarity required to prohibit registration can be enough to tie brands together, sparking a connection in the minds of consumers. I direct that Lord of the Wings should not be registered, subject to the outcome of any appeal of this decision.”
This may come down to the differences in standards for what constitutes trademark infringement in New Zealand law. But it still sucks. To my knowledge, the Tolkien Estate has never broken into the chicken wing food truck industry, so why would the public think there was some association there? Especially when, as referenced above, there is another “Lord of the Wings” chain that exists in other countries?
He believed the overseas food chain Lord of the Wings had successfully used the trademark due to its location.
“[Tolkien estate] haven’t challenged it. I think the problem is that we are in New Zealand,” he said, referring to the Lord of the Rings connection to New Zealand.
But typically a film location isn’t enough to draw enough concern about public confusion, so that differentiator doesn’t strike me as sufficient reason for one restaurant being kosher and the other not.
But trademark bullying works, particularly when the bully has a legal warchest far surpassing the victim. And so Holmes will be changing the name of his food truck to avoid the eye of Sauron.
