The Language Creation Society submited a legal brief to defend the Axanar movie production against Paramount Pictures and CBS Paramount and CBS claim they have a copyright on the Klingon language as well as the look of many things used in the Star Trek TV show and movies.
English translation: “we succeed together in a greater whole.”
Latin transliteration: “wa’ Dol nIvDaq matay’DI’ maQap
Various organizations such as the Klingon Language Institute, as well as individual linguistic scholars, have studied and used the Klingon language for years.
Linguistics professor Marc Okrand initially created the Klingon language. Paramount hired him to create dialogue for Klingon characters in the film Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984).
The version of Klingon he created for the film was not a functioning language, however, and Okrand had to add more grammatical features and vocabulary before publishing the first Klingon dictionary in 1985. More than 250,000 copies of the dictionary sold.
The nonprofit Klingon Language Institute (“KLI”) was formed in 1992 for the purpose of studying, promoting, and spreading the Klingon language.
The search engine Bing allows users to translate text to and from Klingon.
Copyright law protects the means of expressing ideas or concepts, but it does not give the copyright holder the right to exclude others from making use of the ideas or concepts themselves. Neither is one permitted to register copyright in a word.
English translation: “brute strength is not the most important asset in a fight.” Latin transliteration: “Suvlu’taHvIS yapbe’ HoS neH.”
The main issue of the lawsuit is that technology is enabling efficient content creators to make top quality feature movies for a million dollars or less
Good writing and $1 million can make a better movie than bad writing and $200 million. Special effect costs are not a barrier
SOURCES – Popehat, California Legal Brief, Youtube
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