Re: Loxian

>Good points, but I suspet you can copyright the book, word list, dictionary
>and music that it comes in, so .. And people are into Official vs
>UnOfficial, so ..
>
>Mike
>
>
 The issue is not whether you can copyright the grammar, word list,
dictionary etc, but whether people can freely use the language. And I
would say they can: they might not be able to copy word for word large
chunks of your grammar or dictionary, but I don't think that
copyrighting these materials is enough to stop them actually writing in
your language without your permission. Of course, copyright has been
spreading in recent years, but I still don't think you can copyright or
legally own a language, whether a conlang or a natlang. The best you can
do is own the copyright to the grammar and dictionary (and thus legally
control their distribution), but I don't think if someone has already
legally read these materials (for instance by reading your website) that
you can stop them using that knowledge to write in the language.
 Copyright protects the exact form of particular written works, not
their content per se. Isaac Newton, for instance, had he written the
Principia recently, would possess copyright over his Principia and could
stop people copying his work word for work, but he would *not* possess
copyright over the Newtonian physics contained within his book. If
copyright law didn't work like this then there would have been no
progress in the sciences for a long long time, because everyone would
have to ask permission from the first person to publish an idea to use it.

Replies