Indeed, that's kinda my point. It seems like a desperate attempt to force licensing talks, it was never going to happen without getting licensed, and licensing

Indeed, that's kinda my point. It seems like a desperate attempt to force licensing talks, it was never going to happen without getting licensed, and licensing was probably never going to happen organically. It seems they were hoping they could win the suit and force licensing as part of the settlement, which would return the derivative work under Tolkien estate and allow Amazon to use it. In the other case, they were going to get shot down, but then they hoped that the lengthy process of examining the work would convince the estate it was a worthy sequel, and the Tolkien estate would take a cut of the book sales in return for officially licensing it. This was always going to end up in the courts, they probably thought suing first for infringement would be favorable to them rather than wait to get sued later.