He sued the Tolkien Estate and Amazon? Why?? After doing that, I’m not surprised they want to shut him down.
Derivatives are also the reason why the plaintiff lost. Fun fact: fan fiction is not copyrightable, so if you make a derivative work without permission you own nothing. Yes this means it's legal for the original author to just resell your fan work as their own, as the plaintiff alleges (even if it didn't actually happen here).
This is false. It's possible for both you and the original author to simultaneously infringe each other's copyrights. This is unintuitive but true due to the simple fact that you own all the original parts of your work.
Japan's very lucrative doujinshi (read: fan novels) and fan art scenes exist purely because most of the creators and publishers turn a blind eye to them (it's free marketing and good will from fans of their works). They only start caring if the fan works are being sold for profit or harming the original IPs.
Comiket exists thanks to everyone knowing and respecting where the invisible lines in the sand are drawn.
Permission is absolutely required in Japan, legally speaking. In practice, the requirement for permission is ignored under gentlemen's agreements.
In this particular case the Guardian article doesn't answer the question, but it's almost certainly the case that the courts found that Tolkien's estate didn't infringe upon Polychron's unauthorised work. In the UK (and much of the world), the bar for creating an original work is incredibly low, currently it's the EU approach where the author needs to express (creative) originality through choice, selection, or arrangement of a work. Previously the UK had the 'sweat of the brow' rule where the bar was even lower, only requiring 'labour, skill or judgement' in producing a work. The UK also explicitly protects derivative works from being considered infringement if they're found to be a parody, caricature, or pastiche, but this obviously isn't the case here.
Also note that 'copyright service' is a private company that sells copyright protection as a service through registering a work. The UK, unlike some countries, has no register of copyrighted works so you don't need to register a work for it to receive copyright protection in the UK.
I'm honestly asking because I can't find anything that goes as far as the claim you're making regarding original elements. I'm not even sure what original/severable elements could exist in that particular case.
“We need not pursue the issue of originality of derivative works. The Copyright Act grants the owner of a copyright the exclusive right to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work. […] So Pickett could not make a derivative work based on the Prince symbol without Prince's authorization even if Pickett's guitar had a smidgeon of originality.”
I assume the same is true of all of Disney's works too.
They stole first, and then got protected by law.
The original snow white story as written down by the Brothers Grimm is not under copyright and Disney can't do anything to stop you using it.
But lot's of what is associated with that is actually original stuff by the Mouse and therefore (still) copyrighted or trademarked.
In particular the well known blue-yellow dress, red bow in her hair, the dwarves appaerences and names are all not part of the traditional fairy tale.
Also in that story snow white is a child roughly 7 years old.
Though it would be peak copyright brain - and hilarious - to dissolve the copyright on everything until we can find the first human that ever told a story and trace their lineage down to all their modern descendants.