Palantir already has the blessings of the Tolkien estate. All the Tolkien-sounding companies in recent news have the blessings of the Tolkien estate.
> Palantir Technologies is in no way affiliated with, or endorsed or sponsored by, The Saul Zaentz Company d.b.a. Tolkien Enterprises or the Estate of J.R.R. Tolkien.
The Tolkien state (and related orgs) have registered "Palantir" under many (generally publishing/merchandising) domains, but Palantir Technologies has registered it under IC 009: computer software for collection, editing, analysis, viewing, [etc.] and a few others.
Do you know a source that says that? I've wondered about it but never heard anything, and I just did a very quick look and found nothing that explains how and why that is handled.
Also, if the Tolkien estate is still in JRR's decendants' hands, I think it's the third generation at least (counting JRR as the first).
Is that true? I can't find any articles corroborating this claim. As far as I can tell from some brief googling, there is simply no legal course of action to take to prevent companies from using these names (or names from other works of fiction), even if the Tolkien Estate would like to.