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Re: Copyrighting/Patenting a Conlang

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Monday, April 26, 2004, 2:17
Doug Dee scripsit:

> It would seem to me, then, that if you published a grammar of your conlang, > it [the published grammar book] would be protected by copyright.
Yes.
> And if I then used your language to write or translate something, then > I would be guilty of a copyrigth violation, because what I wrote would > be a "derivative work" based on your grammar book.
Not at all. Otherwise, if I wrote a cookbook and you baked a cake according to one of the recipes, your cake would belong to me! The concept of "derivative work" is not exactly defined by the (U.S.) Copyright Act, but is generally indicated thus: A "derivative work" is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. An original work written in German, using a copyrighted German dictionary and a copyrighted German grammar, is not a derivative work of the dictionary or the grammar, because it has not been "recast, transformed, or adapted" from them.
> (On the other hand, by this reasoning a parody like _Bored of the Rings_ > would be "derivative," but apparently that sort of thing is _not_ > a copyright violation.)
That is a different situation. In the U.S., a parody of a work is considered a "fair use" of that work, and is an exception to the exclusive rights of the copyright owner. The reasoning here is that owners are unlikely to license their works for the purpose of parody. The decisive case was the 2 Live Crue parody of Ray Orbison's "Pretty Woman". This rule does not apply in other countries, most of which have a narrower definition of "fair use", covering only things like brief quotations for review or scholarship. IANAL, TINLA. -- John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com http://www.ccil.org/~cowan http://www.reutershealth.com Thor Heyerdahl recounts his attempt to prove Rudyard Kipling's theory that the mongoose first came to India on a raft from Polynesia. --blurb for Rikki-Kon-Tiki-Tavi

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Herman Miller <hmiller@...>