Language Creation Society Says Klingon Language Isn't Covered By Copyright

Reader AmiMoJo writes: Earlier this year Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios filed a lawsuit against the makers of a Star Trek inspired fan film, accusing them of copyright infringement. In their amicus brief, which actually uses Klingon language, the Language Creation Society lists many examples of how Klingon has evolved, and it specifically disputes Paramount's earlier claims that there are no human beings who communicate using the Klingon language. "In fact, there are groups of people for whom Klingon is their only common language. There are friends who only speak Klingon to each other. In fact, at least one child was initially raised as a native speaker of Klingon." As such, Paramount should not be allowed to claim copyright over the entire Klingon language, both in written and spoken form. The language is a tool for people to communicate and express ideas, something people should be allowed to do freely under U.S. law, LCS argues.

Comments

Re:Child abuse

[AmiMoJo]

The father was featured in a documentary I saw a while back, but I can't remember which one. Anyway, he taught his daughter Klingon from birth and she picked it up easily and quickly, as an experiment to study language development in children and see if there was something special about natural languages compared to invented ones. At the age of about 4 she lost interest and stopped using it. Of course she spoke English too.

Re:Child abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Genesis 38:8-10
Leviticus 18:22

LCS rep here

[saizai]

See http://conlang.org/axanar for our press release giving background, links to all the case docs, and a formal legal memorandum from Dentons on conlangs & IP law.

Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Re:Can’t copyright a programming language ei

[saizai]

Can't comment on this directly because it's out of scope for us.

However, the API cases are certainly related law. I suggest you google "Charles Duan" + Klingon, Oracle, Lexmark, and/or Cisco. You'll get relevant info; he writes well, both for posts and amicus briefs.

Re: Elvish

[saizai]

Simple response to this: you can't assign IP that you don't own to begin with. ("Work for hire" is a sort of presumptive assignment doctrine.)

Our argument is that a language *can't* be copyrighted at all in the first place, so it doesn't really matter who made it or what contracts they had.

Of course, the *books* can be copyrighted, and the movies, and the scripts, etc. And they can use trademark to control what's "official" (mostly). But not the language itself.