tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Sep 20 02:21:27 2004

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Re: Gray area

Lieven L. Litaer ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol ghojwI']

Aryeh ben Naphtali wrote:

> Got a problem:

Not only you do.  :-(

> he has gleaned the entire structure of the language along with the
> vocabulary from *HAMLET*.

Gee! - How he do that? Must be smart guy!

> My question sounds: To what extent can a _language_ be copyrighted?

hehehee, the old question.
Search the archives of the year 1997, 98, 99, 01, 02, 03 etc - you'll find 
the questions back, but no straight answer.

I'm no lawyer, but I can tell you what I have found out so far.

> "tlhIngan", and in the two cases when the words "Klingon" or "Star Trek"
> appeared in the *Preface*, they were provided with (R) marks and

Good. They certainly have copyright on these words.
And they certainly do NOT have copyright on every single klingon word, 
because they cannot afford that:
batlh(R) tlhIngan(R) Da-(R)ghoj(R)-jaj(R)

> I stress it again: the book is NOT a translation of TKD; it is a totally 
> new manual written in Russian;

Is there a russian TKD? I guess not.
If it's no translation anyway, there's no problem there.

> all examples of the usage of grammar and
> vocabulary have been borrowed from *HAMLET*.

There has been a case where somebody has copied some special names (only 
the females for instance) from a telephone directory. He was allowed to do 
so, because one can have the copyright on the "list of information", but 
not the "information" itself. See the difference?

[WARNING: my opinion and only speculating!]
Adapting to this, one could say that is illegal to copy (i.e. fotocopy) 
TKD, but a mix of TKD and KGT would be okay [THEORETICALLY!]

But you are not allowed to write a story "the master of the rings", and 
tell the same story as we have in the LOTR. But if I remember correctly, 
you may make a "summary" of such a story, so one could make a summary of 
TKD etc. But I'm not sure with that either.

It still remains the question: can a made up language be copyrighted? I 
guess not, because then every website and email in Klingon is illegal.

> On the basis of the preceding explanations, my question sounds: IS
> PUBLISHING THIS BOOK LEGAL?

To avoid problems, one could try to publish it through the KLI, who is a 
licensed user of the language.

> Or does anyone have M.Okrand's e-mail?

He wouldn't care much, and if he would, it wouldn't matter. It's not his 
language. If anyone objects, then it's certainly 
paramount/viacom/simon&schuster and the like.

For the translation of http://klingon.dw-world.de they have asked paramount 
for permission. It took them five months (!) to respond.

Another problem is that even if they are wrong, they have way more lawyers 
than we have all together.

-----------

I'm having the same problem with my DCKL (Dictionary of contemporary 
klingon). It contains ALL known Klingon vocabulary. Since it is only canon, 
it's taken directly from TKD etc. But it's not a wordlist, it looks more 
like a real dictionary. (by the way I've finished translating it into 
german)

Quvar.

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