Warner Bros. has sued notorious mockbuster production company The Asylum over their upcoming release Age of the Hobbits, claiming its trying to knock off Warners' forthcoming The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. (Age of the Hobbits opens December 11, three days ahead of The Hobbit's debut.)

Here's part of the studio's filed complaint, via The Hollywood Reporter: "The Asylum has been and is promoting and advertising its low-budget film using the confusingly similar and misleading title Age of the Hobbits, in an intentional and willful attempt (i) to trade on the popularity and goodwill associated with the Tolkien novels, the extraordinarily successful Lord of The Rings film trilogy, and the famous HOBBIT mark, (ii) to free-ride on the worldwide advertising campaign in connection with the forthcoming Hobbit films, and (iii) to divert customers and potential customers away from the Hobbit films."

The Asylum recently told THR, "Age of the Hobbits is about the real-life human subspecies, Homo Floresiensis, discovered in 2003 in Indonesia, which have been uniformly referred to as 'Hobbits' in the scientific community. ... As such, the use of the term 'Hobbits' is protected under the legal doctrines of nominal and traditional fair use. Indeed, a simple Google search of Hobbits and archaeology reveals dozens of articles containing the term "Hobbit(s)" in the title."

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com