Paramount is suing the makers of a crowd-funded Star Trek fan film on multiple copyright grounds. But what’s got the Trekkie world buzzing is Paramount’s claim on the Klingon language, which the defendants say cannot be copyrighted because no language can be. From the response filed by Paramount:
“This argument is absurd since a language is only useful if it can be used to communicate with people, and there are no Klingons with whom to communicate,” stated a plaintiffs’ brief authored by David Grossman at Loeb & Loeb. “The Klingon language is wholly fictitious, original and copyrightable, and Defendants’ incorporation of that language in their works will be part of the Court’s eventual substantial similarity analysis. Defendants’ use of the Klingon language in their works is simply further evidence of their infringement of Plaintiffs’ characters, since speaking this fictitious language is an aspect of their characters.”
Things that make you go hmmmm…
Pretty interesting, because yes, we’ve copyright on TSK’s conlang by Trent Pehrson, and I agree it’s a suable offence to be used for anything other than what it was intended for.