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: Elvish

[Anonymous Coward]

Tolkien actually invented the elvish languages himself, in full. A professional linguist was simply hired by the studio to flesh out the bits that James Doohan made up for the star trek movies. I'd be interested in seeing how that distinction plays out legally

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:LCS rep here

[John.Banister]

Have you considered resolving this dispute in a traditional Klingon manner? It would be fun to see a Paramount executive attempting to enforce copyright with a bat'leth.

Re: Child abuse

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Every single ethnic group believes in the afterlife in some form or fashion.

At one time, every single ethnic group believed that the Earth was flat. Turns out they were wrong.

-

What will you do if you're wrong?

Ahhh, Pascal's Wager, the lamest of all "arguments" to believe in magical fairy tales.

If I'm wrong, I'll get to hang out with all the cool people- Jimi Hendrix, Christopher Hitchens, most of my friends, family, and lovers, Janis Joplin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Douglas Adams, Woody Allen, Mick Jagger, Kevin Bacon, Richard Burton, George Carlin, Jeremy Clarkson, Jimmy Carr, Bruce Lee, Orson Welles, Robin Williams, David Gilmour, Charlie Parker, Steve Wozniak, etc etc etc....the list goes on and on.

If your god is willing to cast those people into the pit of Hell, then fuck your god, okay? Just fuck him.

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.