copyrightI am considering using the word “Sauron” (The mythical all-seeing eye from Lord of the Rings) as PART of a company name, it fits extremely well with the purpose of the business.
I have see this word used before, and is currently used in other contexts, including in other fictional works (see Wikipedia entry for Sauron)
Is there any reason I cant do this? Would I be infringing any copyright / trademark / intellectual property rights?
Don't do it.
Copyright law varies by country, but definitely in the USA and potentially here in the UK, fictional characters can be protected by copyright. Sauron is probably distinctive enough to be protected for sure in the USA.
Since one of the rights of copyright is the right to make derivative works based on the work, if there is such protection, the author (or whoever is the proprietor of the rights in and to the text including the character) retains the right to make further use of that character in such derivative works.
The Protection of Fictional Characters, Ivan Hoffman BA JD
US courts have afforded copyright protection to fictional characters where they have been found to be “sufficiently delineated”, meaning, developed with enough specificity so as to warrant copyright protection.
The UK court has traditionally been more reluctant to recognise this. In the case of Kelly v Cinema Houses Ltd (1928-35) the court provided Sherlock Holmes as an example of a well-known literary character that would probably not attract copyright protection.
Since then, the interpretation of copyright law in the UK has been altered by developments in the European courts. Our 2012 Publishing eBulletin discussed how the decision in the European Infopaq case was applied to a copyright infringement case involving the plot and themes from the book “Down Among the Dead Men”. Infopaq tells us that the copyright will protect those elements of a work which are an expression of the intellectual creation of their author. If plots and themes (as in “Down Among the Dead Men”) and 11-word extracts from a literary work (as in Infopaq) warrant protection, perhaps literary fictional characters are similarly protectable? The question remains to be tested in court in the UK. Until then, we will watch with interest the treatment of the character of Sherlock Holmes in this latest US case.
Sherlock Holmes and the case of characters’ copyright, Harbottle & Lewis
In the case of Conan Doyle v London Mystery Magazine Ltd [1949], which concerned the use of the name Sherlock Holmes and the famous address of 221b Baker Street, the judge refused to grant an injunction to restrain the defendants from using the name and address. Contrast this, however, with the US ruling in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc v American Honda Motor Co [1995] where the judge afforded copyright protection to the James Bond name on the basis that ‘a James Bond film without James Bond is not a James Bond film’. ...
While the UK case law on this area is limited, the general consensus is supportive of the view that English law does not recognise copyright in literary fictional characters. This view was endorsed in Tyburn Productions Ltd v Conan Doyle [1991], in which it was held that a claim to copyright in the fictional characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson was unjustifiable in English law due to the lack of recognition of such a concept.
With the popularity of characters such as Harry Potter, the UK may need to reassess the position of fictional characters under the CDPA 1988. However, even if s1(1) were to be widened to expressly provide protection for fictional characters, a test would still need to be established to distinguish copyrightable characters from non-copyrightable ones and the difficulty in establishing a test of this kind is evident from the confusing and inconsistent decisions in US case law.
Sequel rights: are fictional characters, plots and themes protectable?, The In-House Lawyer.co.uk
tl;dr: don't go looking for trouble by using other people's fictional characters without a license.
'Sauron' is also trademark protected within the EU (I haven't checked the USA) in quite a lot of classes: TM EU002362929, EU013078555. You would be absolutely shooting yourself in the foot if you use the term 'Sauron' in any of those classes - or anything with equivalent protection in the USA (you do the search) - when you could equally well use something that's not protected.
In my opinion, you have absolutely no right to use “Sauron” anywhere within your company (not only as a part of its or project’s name) due to pure and direct copyright infringement.
Exactly all other uses of this name, you point to (Wikipedia) are:
There is absolutely no mark of any usage of name “Sauron” at least close to business. There is no company, project, startup, business deal etc. name in anywhere related. Why? Quite clearly – because of copyright infringement.
I’m neither Tolkien lover nor lawyer, but I’m pretty sure, that a person, company or organisation, that currently holds all copyrights to all Tolkien’s books and works also holds copyrights for all name, places, characters etc. inside these books and works.
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