How can an &quot;unofficial&quot; book avoid copyright issues?
<p>I was in a bookstore today and I saw a coloring book called "Tolkien's World" which was based on characters from The Lord of the Rings and other works by JRR Tolkien. On the back cover, it said:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>This book is unofficial and is not authorised by the Tolkien Estate or HarperCollins Publishers.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>How can the author and his/her publisher get away with that? Surely the publication of the work is going to infringe on the copyright of the Tolkien Estate and HarperCollins? I would have expected publication of the work to have drawn a lawsuit, but it's clearly been in print for a couple of years.</p>

<p>Disclaimer - I have no background in law.</p>

<p>This question was answered more completely <a href="https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/179284/42547">over on SciFi.SE</a>. The user over there lays out a number of points explaining that the works are "substantially transformative". The author of these works goes to some effort to build a case for this substantial transformation in his prefaces and notices in the derived work as well.</p>

copyright