It’s back to court for New Line and the heirs of J.R.R. Tolkien over claims that the studio is keeping a greater share of the profits from the Lord of the Rings trilogy than it is supposed to. If you’ll remember, New Line allegedly tried some tricky bookkeeping years ago with Rings money, and that ended with a judgment for the Tolkien estate to the tune of 7.5% of gross profits, roughly $220 million.

The latest development is a derivative of this still unsettled arrangement. A state court judge in California has denied a motion by New Line to decide the claims made by the Tolkien estate, and will instead turn it over to a jury. Those proceedings are expected to begin in October.

However, Judge Ann I. Jones retained the right to be persuaded by the defendants at a later date, meaning she might split the case into two separate hearings, based on what specific issues she thinks a jury needs to hear and what she feels she could decide herself.

New Line, for its part, said it was “encouraged” by that last bit of news, which is as close to a victory as the studio has had in this imbroglio.

One of the winners in all of this, strangely enough, could be Fox. News Corp operates 20th and HarperCollins, which originally published Lord of the Rings and filed the lawsuit with the Tolkien estate last February. How much of the reported $6 billion in revenue will the Tolkiens and HarperCollins wrest away, the full quarter-billion or something a little less?