Re: Linguistic copyright (RE: this is what I got in the mail.)

Quoting Jeffrey Henning <Jeffrey@...>:

> J. K. Hoffman comunu:
>
> >I'm not entirely sure that you *can* copyright a created language,
> >but still...
>
> As I understand U.S. copyright law, databases (simple tables of facts)
> cannot be copyright.  So if I make an Esperanto/English lexicon, that
> can't be copyright.  However, if I make a Teonaht/English lexicon,
> that
> is not a table of facts, but an artistic opinion about what the words
> in
> a fictional language might mean.  So I would contend that a Teonaht
> lexicon is copyrightable.  Certainly, all other Teonaht materials
> (grammars, poetry, sample texts) are also copyrightable.
>
> Of course, I'm a not a lawyer either, but I have had to develop an
> understanding of copyright, trademark and patent law at work.
There's been endless and not always civil discussions on the copyrightability
of invented languages on the various Tolkienian Linguistics mailing lists (eg
elfling and tolklang). Alot of standpoints has been very eloquently (or not)
argued. I'd VERY MUCH appreciate if we did not discuss such things on CONLANG.

                                                               Andreas

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