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Before Tolkien, elves were imagined as fairies or nature spirits, but Tolkien basically changed that when he introduced his tall blonde elves and many fantasy stories adopted this idea using elves, men and dwarves.

In the Elder Scrolls Series we see high elves, orcs, goblins and all sorts of Tolkien-esqe races. But is it considered plagiarism for this series (and every other) to portray elves that Tolkien invented?

Basically everything Tolkien made has become free game to be transplanted into other settings, or in a slightly altered setting. Once you revolutionize an entire genre as much as he did, people tend to copy you. But, to be technical, the elves are more directly from DnD (which also borrowed from Tolkien), that's why Dunmer are referred to as "Drow" in old lore on occasion.

For a lawsuit, I don't think Tolkien's estate would have a real chance.

Well, as you pointed out, Tolkein didn't invent elves or dwarves. He merely reimagined them. Now copyright law can be a little spotty sometimes; one of the most difficult things to enforce is the content of a story. If someone has blatantly copied your work, that's one thing; but if someone has made something that's merely very similar it can be hard to really prosecute them. Not impossible, just slightly more of a pain in the butt. Now, Tolkein's elves aren't exactly like the elves of ancient European folklore, but they are very similar. It would be very difficult to argue in a court of law that Tolkein invented elves and he or his estate should receive ludicrous amounts of compensation for the now-common use of elves that are merely very similar to what he wrote about.

Something that's much less ambiguous is hobbits. Tolkein definitely invented hobbits. Now, sure, hobbits are just another "race of little people" to a certain extent, but they are an original creation of his nonetheless, and that can be enforced by law... sort of. This copyright has been a real bugbear for the creators of Dungeons & Dragons, who wanted to include hobbits and a few other Tolkein critters in their game, but the Tolkein Estate were having none of it. Thus, the halfling race became a thing. It's pretty obvious that halflings are just hobbits under a different name, but again they aren't the same thing; they're just very similar. For one thing, halflings seem to be much more prone to adventure than hobbits.

Now that's all answering the question (to a certain extent) from a legal perspective, but from a philosophical perspective the question gets a lot more complicated. Tolkein's writing has inspired generations of fantasy fans to write and create their own worlds. That's a level of fame that is very very hard to achieve. Inspiration is very important when you want to become a professional writer, and it can be hard to come by. The line between being inspired by something and merely ripping it off can be very blurred, and it often comes down to a matter of personal opinion.

Furthermore, many of the greatest stories throughout history lived on not by being retold wholesale for generations, but by being adapted, translated, and changed over time. The legend of King Arthur, for example, had many authors who all added to it and adapted it in their own ways. The Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraft stories, being in the public domain, have been added to over the years to become something much more than they could have been when they were originally written. Again, whether that's a good or bad thing is entirely a matter of opinion, but they have been preserved by the fame that this has created for them. I'm sure that there are more people on this forum who learned about halflings through Dungeons & Dragons than they did by reading the Silmarillion.

[inhale deeply] AND, when you get right down to it, the stories that we tell are a function of our culture. When an author has made something that influences a culture very profoundly, they can only expect that it will be reflected in the stories that other authors write. Fantasy stories were already being influenced by the impact that fantasy has had on our culture, and at the end of the day Tolkein changed the way our culture thinks about fantasy in a very big way. Now, not every fantasy story being written in the modern era uses Tolkein's stories as a base, but they've become important enough for us that it would be reasonable to say that he changed what an elf is in our collective consciousness, and that's why people use his elves as a template for new elves.

Many authors are very happy when they have that kind of impact on the culture. Others get grumpy about it. I don't know which one Tolkein would be, but I like to imagine that he's looking down on the creativity he inspired in us and smiling.

I don't know about Tolkien, but I bet Santa is having a right jolly laugh about it.

It's hardly a secret that TES draws heavily on Tolkien....

No. Whilst TES is influnced by Tolkien and does have it's roots tied to what Tolkien created, it is not plagrism. TES does something that was never done before or rarely done, it merged dwarves with elfs. The Dwemer were steampunk(ish) elves that relied on science. LOTR's elves are fairly static. There's only two groups i can recall, the elves of Lorien and Mirkwood. TES has a ton of variety with it's elves. But Tolkien did set the standards for the fantasy genre and most elves are based on his as a template.

If, the Tolkien estate attempted to sue everything that used it, that would be a nightmare to prove and would be an insult to Tolkien's legacy. Not many authors have a legacy like this and being one that could be considered the grandfather of the modern fantasy genre is incredibly rare. TES used tolkien as template and whilst Bethesda did not intend to, Arena ended up being something they did not plan being. That, being TES as we know it.

Tons of fantasy stuff uses elves and most uses it's own lore. Dragon Age does a wonderful twist with it's elves. TES has the variety and tons of lore to back it up, LOTR is the most notable and originator of the elves that we know etc..

The concept of Elves weren't created by Tolkien in the first place... Elves are among other things mentioned in the Norse creation myths - these were first written down around the 11-12 century, but hails from around the time of Christ, if not even earlier.

Really? I've never seen that.

Tolkien didn't invent them, first of all. And second, if plagiarism was even a possibility, there's an entire category of elven romance on Amazon that would get taken down (I write in this category, so, lol yeah...). Elves have come to be known like the Tolkien type, yes, but it's an idea that can't be copyrighted either, unlike the Hobbits. But that's because he named them.

Elven romance? Like Hermey the dentist having a relationship with the heir to the Keebler cookie empire? I'm pretty sure Peter Jackson already tried something like that in his Hobbit movie.

Elder Scrolls definitely tosses out Tolkien's morality dynamic. In Middle Earth, good creates, while evil corrupts. In Tamriel, chaos creates, while order controls. Good and evil aren't universal things in Elder Scrolls, while order and chaos are. See orc chiefs practicing Sith style rule of 2 or the fact that if Berserk's Griffith moved to Morrowind, he's just be the textbook average joe.

Pretty sure TES took inspiration from Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion fantasy novels as well.

is pure Moorcock Lore with the Divines and Daedric Princes being dead ringers for Lords of Law and Lords of Chaos... In fact a lot of TES Lore strikes me as having a 'Moorcock vibe' to it. That is probably why I like it...

Azura's Blessings!

Again, it destroys any idea of universal moral absolutism. While most would consider corruption to be bad, control can go both ways. Again, morality based on culture is still a thing, but universal rightness is, as Death states, a big lie:

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Ha! While reading through this necroed thread, I learned that TES:Arena contains a single reference to Dark Elves as "Drow," which I also learned is the D&D name for Dark Elves. (Sadly, I don't have much experience with D&D.) I'm guessing Bethesda stopped using "Drow" to avoid licensing issues with D&D, and that the single instance of its use in TES:Arena was a mistake-- that perhaps they had used it more liberally but then decided (or were instructed?) to remove it from the game due to said D&D licensing issues, and the single usage that made it into the released game had been overlooked when they were taking it out of the game. And it's such an isolated usage, which many players might never encounter, so the D&D owners never took Bethesda to task for it. That's my theory, anyway.

Also, by the time of Skyrim, all Dunmer are consistently gray, but during the Daggerfall and Battlespire eras, there were instances of brown dark elves, like what you more commonly see in fantasy anime over western fantasy. Heck, even in Oblivion, we get one: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Arvin_Dalvilu

Most high fantasy stories have humans, like elves, "born of light". Elder Scrolls says "f' that; hail Sithis":

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But unlike the Christian Bible, there is no shame to have that connection to darkness... That's why there are so many instances of emperors as heroes in this series.

I wanted to chip in on this as I find it an interesting subject, though I see it's an oldish post. Angry Nord has already pointed out that the elves can be found in Norse Literature. What is interesting for me is that it really does feel like the Elder scrolls draws something from the Norse sources, unlike some other fantasy worlds which draw more exclusively on later interpretations of myth and folklore, I feel like the creators of the Elder Scrolls are keen to look more at ancient literature.
I can waffle and I am also not an expert so I'll just list my observations.
The Prose Edda (Snorri Sturlusson) 13th Century Iceland lists a variety of elf kind, Light Elves (Ljósálfar), dark Elves (dökkálfar) are at least tempting at face value to compare with Altmer and Dunmer. Light elves are fair and fine to look upon and live up in some fancy place. the dark elves live under ground and are "black as pitch." From the description of the dark elves' home, you can see something else is suggested. (I know these descriptions have some unfortunate racial connotations, we can't do much about that other than pay attention to the fact they are there, and not pretend they don't exist.)
There are other names for the elves which introduces some uncertainty as to who exactly is being talked about but essentially, the dark elves live in Svartalfheimr (land of the black elves) making them all but synonymous with the dwarfs. Dwarfs in Norse Myth are not described as small, and the elves themselves are described as pointy eared, as far as we know, they looked like anyone else, perhaps a little exaggerated to inhabit some nature aspect. So, from the Norse, you can have fair and perhaps haughty light elves, dark elves, and Dwemer. Dwemer by the way is from the Old English, Dwimmer or Dweomer, to do with magic or some illusory craft.
The Dark elves/ Dwarfs of Norse myth are masters of craft, particularly metallurgy and this is what we see with the Dwemer of ES. I'm curious to know how the modern concept of dwarfs came about, sturdy, diminutive, long bearded. Surely before Tolkien? but the Elder scrolls seems to hearken back to something older.

I would add that medieval tales of Elves do exist, the couple I have read, the tale of Sir Orfeo (a re imagining of orpheus and Euridice) and the Mabinogion, both describe elves as inhabiting an other-world. They come into our world but they are kind of living a parallel existence, albeit with magic and a sense of superiority.