tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 06 07:48:52 2007

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Re: KLI authorized user

Terrence Donnelly ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

--- Alan Anderson <[email protected]> wrote:

> That legal formula states that the KLI is authorized
> by Paramount  
> Pictures to use the specified marks ("Klingon, Star
> Trek, and all  
> related marks") over which Paramount claims control.
>  It most  
> obviously applies to the word "Klingon" itself.  I
> don't believe it  
> applies to the language itself (languages are
> covered by neither  
> copyright nor trademark law), though I wouldn't be
> surprised if  
> Viacom's lawyers claimed that it does.
> 

If Klingon were a natural language, I would agree that
it can't be copyrighted, but Klingon is a product
that first appeared in copyrighted works (movies and
books) and didn't exist beforehand independently of
those works, and that I believe is what Paramount
would base its claim on.  It may or may not hold up in
court, but who has pockets deep enough to take them
on?

This is somewhat similar to the case of loglan vs.
lojban: the original creator of loglan claimed
ownership of the entire language, so revisionists
had to relexify the entire thing, even changing its
name, in order to use the basic grammatical system
independently.

Thinking back to the discussions of how one might
expand or clarify aspects of Klingon grammar, this is
the main roadblock to any such attempts, that a
for-profit corporation controls Klingon's ultimate
fate.  They used to be very aggressive in attacking
anything they saw as an infringement on their rights.
They do seem to have relaxed a bit in recent years
(as Klingon has become less of a cash cow), but I
think they would still frown on any attempt to take
away any of their control of the language, as 
independent development would be likely to do.

-- ter'eS

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