Re: Interesting article about conlangs and the law

Tim Smith wrote:
>
> I thought that there _was_ a case in which a US
> federal court decided that you can't copyright a
> language (con- or nat-).  IIRC, this was in the
> context of the Loglan vs. Lojban split, but I don't
> remember the details.  Can anyone either confirm
> or deny this?

Just going on memory here, but I believe the case
between Loglan and Lojban was over the right to
use the name Loglan. It took several years, and by
that time the Lojbanists had adopted the name
Lojban, so their win was a moot point.

Loglan was a registered trademark of the Loglan
Institute, but the court reasoned that, as Loglan was
a contraction of Logical Language, the name could
not be trademarked.

The Loglanists were pretty protective of their lan-
guage. If you wrote a book in Loglan and wanted
to publish it, your only option (according to their
guidelines) was to submit it to the Loglan Institute.
If they decided not to publish it, you were out of
luck. You could not publish it on your own. If they
did publish it, they would give you some royalty
of their choosing. I believe this is what caused the
break between the Loglanists and the Lojbanists.

IANAL, and I'm just relating what I remember
reading in past years, so caveat lector.

--Ph. D.

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