Re: Conlang legal protection (WAS: Conlang music)

I don't know if this is relevant, but back when the Chicago Bulls�were making
their first championship run, the term "three-peat"�was coined. If I remember
right, Pat Riley apparently used it�first, and tried to copyright it (or
did?), and tried to get royalties�from Chicago Bulls "three-peat"
merchandise. Ah, it is true.�There's an interesting discussion/summary
here:��http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-peat��So, in fact, Pat Riley
did coin a word--a neologism--and now�apparently collects royalties *any
time* that word is used on�merchandise (he trademarked it). If this happened,
just what�prevents a language creator from coining every single word�in
their dictionary?��Oh, and what if two conlangers decided to do this, and
I, say,�coined "mata" as "see", and someone else with an entirely�different
language but similar phoneme inventory decided�to trademark "mata" as
"cat"?��-David�*******************************************************************�"sunly
eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."�"No eternal reward will forgive
us now for wasting the dawn."��-Jim
Morrison��http://dedalvs.conlang.org/��On Jan 8, 2009, at 1∞56 PM,
Sai Emrys wrote:��> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 1:24 PM, Paul Kershaw
<ptkershaw@...>�> wrote:�>> Dictionary definitions, though, have a creative
element. For�>> instance, here is the first definition of "dog" from
various�>> online dictionaries (courtesy of onelook.com; quoted here
verbatim�>> under fair use):�>�> Yes, original work is present in longer
glosses, whereas this isn't�> the case in e.g. a phone book. I agree, but
that's separate.�>�> I was trying to make the point that the words
*themselves*, quite�> aside from any gloss or other presentation, may be
considered�> copyrightable, because they are created works of nontrivial
size.�>�> (Though this raises the issue: do neologism creators have
copyright�> over small coinings? How much does one have to create before
it�> counts?)�>�> - Sai�

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