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>Paramount claims copyright ownership of Klingon Well, sorta. Not according to the Language Creation Society! From the fallout of the case where Paramount/CBS

>Paramount claims copyright ownership of Klingon Well, sorta. Not according to the Language Creation Society! From the fallout of the case where Paramount/CBS sued the Axenar guys for the temerity to make a fan film without paying them for it comes this Washington Post opinion [0] (I've added the links found in the text at [1] and [2]): >It seemed a stretch to suggest that the plaintiffs were claiming copyright in the Klingon language itself, and the court agreed, taking the somewhat unusual step of denying LCS’s motion to file its brief [1], on the grounds that the court didn’t have to “reach the issue of whether languages, and specifically the Klingon language, are copyrightable” in ruling on the case. >The LCS has declared victory — at least to the extent that the final ruling in the case will not hold that the Klingon language is protected by copyright. Its statement — with a translation into Klingon, for those of you who read Klingon — is posted here [2]. The situation doesn't seem as rosy as the LCS' statement suggests, but as a consequence, I feel comfortable in claiming that Paramount does not currently, successfully, claim copyright ownership of Klingon. That said, "not getting sued by Paramount in future" is a pretty good reason for Unicode to exclude anything. Tengwar, the script used to write Quenya and Sindarin, however... [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/01/09/copyright-in-klingon/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzmetJxi-p0VN0t5MWNPOTZ4SU0/view?resourcekey=0-4D0ocYrJORM_bViJBv86aQ https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzmetJxi-p0VN0t5MWNPOTZ4SU0... [2] https://conlang.org/axanar/#updates https://conlang.org/axanar/#updates

xg15 5y ago
Ok, my takeaway is that the question "can you copyright languages in the US copyright system?" currently sits at "maybe". But we're at least sure you can't patent "a procedure for producing ATP using O2 as catalyst and energy source", right? Right?
WorldMaker 5y ago
There is a difference between the copyright standard of the language itself (which may not be a copyrightable thing, though the court left that for future courts to decide in the given case) and the copyright standard of custom glyphs used by that language though. The custom glyphs themselves to "write" the language are artistic design elements usually recognized to have some copyright protections as with any works of art. (There's also further protections in they way they are often used that sometimes trademark protections also may be applied and looser defined "trade dress" protections as well. Aurebesh, the custom glyphs of Star Wars is pretty heavily defended by such protections in commercial projects.) Unfortunately, the sources for the Klingon glyphs are copyrighted movies and fonts owned or commissioned by ViacomCBS and there's not much of an argument to be made that they aren't art designs they own. I believe the same applies to Tengwar that too much of comes from artistic work written and/or commissioned for books still in copyright and owned by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Perhaps when more of the copyrights expire on these originating works Unicode can revisit them. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen soon. (Even Tengwar isn't expected to expire until 2044, 70 years after JRR Tolkien's death.)
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  That, and it sounds like this is only covering a case in US copyright law. Unicode potentially has to worry about the rest of the world as well. I can imagine that the Unicode Consortium's general feeling on the subject is outside the scope of their mission, and that pleasing a sci-fi fandom just isn't really worth the potential for headaches, and that it's better to let them continue to rely on ConScript.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    My impression is that once the Astral Plane opened up, there's enough academic reason to want to encode those glyphs as there are certainly some really interesting academic work already using Klingon glyphs or Tengwar or others (I don't know if it is more or less than say Linear A, but it's not a contest), and we do risk losing some of that academic discussion if it isn't reliably encoded in something like Unicode. Academic papers are very clearly carved out in copyright laws as "fair use". Unfortunately to protect fonts as copyrightable a lot of the similar carve outs that should make any and all Unicode encoding of glyphs "fair use" are something of a swiss cheese at the moment, and yeah I don't blame Unicode for feeling that their mission definitely does not include fighting the definition of what should be "fair use" in most of the world.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> >Paramount claims copyright ownership of Klingon > Well, sorta. Paramount definitely claims copyright on the “Klingon” glyphs from various ST properties that fans have mapped to the language described in The Klingon Dictionary (which is newer than the glyphs), so as far as those glyphs and any derivative works are concerned – what both the Unicode Consortium and any font makers would be concerned with – Paramount’s copyrights are a problem. Whether they own the language beyond that may be a murky legal question, but it is also beside the point. (And, actually, what your source supports is that Paramount definitely claims ownership of Klingon, the other party in the case disputed it, and the court found that they didn’t need to decide the issue to resolve the case. That is in no way a “sorta” on “Paramount claims copyright ownership on Klingon”. That a third-party seeking to file an amicus brief against Paramount’s claim on that point chose to do a victory dance because they were told to go away because the issue they were concerned with was ultimately not material to the resolution of the case is…interesting spin, but not much else.)
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  >That is in no way a “sorta” on “Paramount claims copyright ownership on Klingon” I see the problem. IANAL, but I take "Paramount claims copyright" to mean something legally enforceable; an uncontroversial legal right that they are claiming [0]. As suggested by both parent and the sources further above, that matter has yet to be settled, and wasn't addressed in the decision. The statement "Paramount claims that it has the copyright to the Klingon language" I wholeheartedly agree with (and disagree, obviously, on the ability of Paramount to claim copyright on a collaborative intellectual effort between James Doohan, Marc Okrand, and others, both due to nerd fervour and a bunch of hand-waving about the intersection of IP and morality that are beyond the scope of this tangent). [0] Possibly this is due to the ubiquity of the phrase "copyright claim", deployed to describe the monetization of someone else's intellectual property. The uh claimant is presumed to have a legal right to the material being claimed, but it's not clear that Paramount has that legal right.

xg15 5y ago

Ok, my takeaway is that the question "can you copyright languages in the US copyright system?" currently sits at "maybe". But we're at least sure you can't patent "a procedure for producing ATP using O2 as catalyst and energy source", right? Right?

WorldMaker 5y ago

There is a difference between the copyright standard of the language itself (which may not be a copyrightable thing, though the court left that for future courts to decide in the given case) and the copyright standard of custom glyphs used by that language though. The custom glyphs themselves to "write" the language are artistic design elements usually recognized to have some copyright protections as with any works of art. (There's also further protections in they way they are often used that sometimes trademark protections also may be applied and looser defined "trade dress" protections as well. Aurebesh, the custom glyphs of Star Wars is pretty heavily defended by such protections in commercial projects.) Unfortunately, the sources for the Klingon glyphs are copyrighted movies and fonts owned or commissioned by ViacomCBS and there's not much of an argument to be made that they aren't art designs they own. I believe the same applies to Tengwar that too much of comes from artistic work written and/or commissioned for books still in copyright and owned by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Perhaps when more of the copyrights expire on these originating works Unicode can revisit them. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen soon. (Even Tengwar isn't expected to expire until 2044, 70 years after JRR Tolkien's death.)

mumblemumble 5y ago
That, and it sounds like this is only covering a case in US copyright law. Unicode potentially has to worry about the rest of the world as well. I can imagine that the Unicode Consortium's general feeling on the subject is outside the scope of their mission, and that pleasing a sci-fi fandom just isn't really worth the potential for headaches, and that it's better to let them continue to rely on ConScript.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  My impression is that once the Astral Plane opened up, there's enough academic reason to want to encode those glyphs as there are certainly some really interesting academic work already using Klingon glyphs or Tengwar or others (I don't know if it is more or less than say Linear A, but it's not a contest), and we do risk losing some of that academic discussion if it isn't reliably encoded in something like Unicode. Academic papers are very clearly carved out in copyright laws as "fair use". Unfortunately to protect fonts as copyrightable a lot of the similar carve outs that should make any and all Unicode encoding of glyphs "fair use" are something of a swiss cheese at the moment, and yeah I don't blame Unicode for feeling that their mission definitely does not include fighting the definition of what should be "fair use" in most of the world.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> >Paramount claims copyright ownership of Klingon > Well, sorta. Paramount definitely claims copyright on the “Klingon” glyphs from various ST properties that fans have mapped to the language described in The Klingon Dictionary (which is newer than the glyphs), so as far as those glyphs and any derivative works are concerned – what both the Unicode Consortium and any font makers would be concerned with – Paramount’s copyrights are a problem. Whether they own the language beyond that may be a murky legal question, but it is also beside the point. (And, actually, what your source supports is that Paramount definitely claims ownership of Klingon, the other party in the case disputed it, and the court found that they didn’t need to decide the issue to resolve the case. That is in no way a “sorta” on “Paramount claims copyright ownership on Klingon”. That a third-party seeking to file an amicus brief against Paramount’s claim on that point chose to do a victory dance because they were told to go away because the issue they were concerned with was ultimately not material to the resolution of the case is…interesting spin, but not much else.)

revolvingocelot 5y ago
>That is in no way a “sorta” on “Paramount claims copyright ownership on Klingon” I see the problem. IANAL, but I take "Paramount claims copyright" to mean something legally enforceable; an uncontroversial legal right that they are claiming [0]. As suggested by both parent and the sources further above, that matter has yet to be settled, and wasn't addressed in the decision. The statement "Paramount claims that it has the copyright to the Klingon language" I wholeheartedly agree with (and disagree, obviously, on the ability of Paramount to claim copyright on a collaborative intellectual effort between James Doohan, Marc Okrand, and others, both due to nerd fervour and a bunch of hand-waving about the intersection of IP and morality that are beyond the scope of this tangent). [0] Possibly this is due to the ubiquity of the phrase "copyright claim", deployed to describe the monetization of someone else's intellectual property. The uh claimant is presumed to have a legal right to the material being claimed, but it's not clear that Paramount has that legal right.