Re: Interesting article about conlangs and the law

Jim Henry wrote:
> On 9/13/07, taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-conlang@...> wrote:
>> http://www.suburbandestiny.com/?p=240
>>
>> Some factual errors though, it is claimed:
>>
>> "Inaction of the Author.  If an author doesn't defend their property
>> rights, then they can lose the right to assert them anywhere."
>>
>> This is not valid for copyright.
>
> It's true only of trademarks, as far as I know.  But maybe
> trademark would be a better way to protect a conlang,
> if you wanted to protect it, than copyright....?  As far as
> I know there have been no test cases about how copyright
> (or trademark or patent) applies to conlangs themselves
> (as opposed to tutorials, grammar descriptions and
> dictionaries, to which the application of copyright law is
> fairly obvious).
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?

(Note: I haven't read the article that Taliesin cites.  The server
doesn't seem to be responding.)

- Tim

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