Re: Conlang legal protection (WAS: Conlang music)

2009/1/8 Sai Emrys <saizai@...>:
> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 5:35 PM, Paul Kershaw <ptkershaw@...> wrote:
>> It hasn't, and I don't think Paramount would win. Wikipedia suggests the best
>> precedent is Feist v Rural
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service),
>> where a telephone book company tried to argue that its contents were
>> copyrighted. SCOTUS ruled that you can copyright how you present information,
>> but you can't copyright information itself (so if I type up the phone book in
>> a different format, I wouldn't be violating copyright law).
>>
>> As far as I can tell (but IANAL), any claim would have to come under trademark
>> law, not copyright law. For instance, that's how Lucas managed to stop Luther
>> Campbell from performing as Luke Skyywalker
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Skyywalker_Records). I'm not sure the
>> courts would be impressed with someone's attempt to claim all the thousands
>> of words in their conlang are trademarked, though.
>>
>> But I also agree with Chris's follow-up: It's good form to ask permission, even
>> if it's not legally required.
>
> AFAIK, the legal argument here is that, unlike a normal phonebook,
> map, or dictionary, a conlang author has created the words that are
> being listed - they're not externally existing information that is
> being described.
This is true -- that's why conlangs can probably have protection.

However, take as an example Finnegan's Wake. Take a selection of its
non-English words (they're mostly nonsense to the casual reader [I am
a casual reader]). Create a new story using only those words. Is that
a copyright violation? Can you copyright a single word?

I think the courts would not accept that. People attempting to control
the use of a very small work have invariably turned to trademarks, and
Paul Kershaw has argued against that.

> If a court ruled that this is the case, then practically speaking,
> using words created by the author would be copyright infringement
> (although potentially covered by one of the exclusions that makes that
> OK).
>
> However, making up new words might not be, since copyright does not
> protect *methods*, i.e. the grammar itself, just *content*, i.e. the
> corpus.
>
> One could argue that a grammar is patentable.
The patent could cover the whole language, not just the grammar.

What is claimed is:
1. A system of encoding thoughts.
2. A system as claimed in (1) wherein the encoding is verbal.
3. A system as claimed in (2) wherein there exists a written encoding
for the verbal components.
4. A system as claimed in (2) consisting of a phonology, a lexicon,
and a grammar.
...

But this suffers the same issue as software patents. Software patents
get around this by using "a system comprised of a computer and...",
which isn't appropriate to languages.

> Practically though - I don't know of any court cases that have
> actually tested either of these arguments, so it's pretty nebulous.
>
> - Sai
>