Ok let's be honest, if we were going to get any company to bring back the game we love, that's what they'd do: start over from scratch to invite the maximum possible number of new players.
I disagree. If a company brings back LOTR TCG, the largest source of potential consumers are the people who've played the game before, not new players. Based on what I've seen on Gemp with the lackluster participation in Second Edition, most of those veteran players are not interested in starting over from scratch, with no backwards compatibility. I know I'm not. If a company brought back the game, but made it so I couldn't play it with any of the cards I already have, I would probably not invest in it.
The best compromise is to do what Decipher normally did whenever they began a new "block" of the game: The first new set is bigger, and designed such that you can play a balanced game just with that set (and other sets in the same block). That's how new players get introduced to the game, by participating in block play. The rest of us Veterans will still have Expanded, Open, Standard, etc... or else I'm just not interested.
Now if you're talking a continuing council, where we start releasing new, virtual cards (like Star Trek), then I agree with your points fully. Here I'll just start a new thread for that.
I'd be in favor of that, but the fact is the vast majority of my experience is now online play via Gemp, and the fellow who runs Gemp is not going to add any new cards, rules, formats, or anything like that. So unfortunately a continuing council is not going to have any influence over that.