Various and Sundry

Crisis of Infinite Star Treks: Being a P’tach about the Klingon Language

Would you believe this is the 15th entry in an ongoing series on Star Trek’s future and fandom? Don Adams would.

Eriq Gardner wrote a good article in the Hollywood Reporter yesterday about a recent amicus brief filed in relation to the CBS/Paramount lawsuit against the Axanar fan film.

As I’ve mentioned earlier in this blog series, I absolutely believe that CBS/Paramount has real and legally binding ownership of Star Trek intellectual property (IP). For non-fans, this may sound like common sense, but for some fans, they seem to need to be reminded of this fact.

However, when it comes to the Klingon language, that’s work-for-hire they’ve given out free to the world to build and improve upon in a way languages naturally grow. Languages naturally want to be open-source anyway, much to the chagrin of Grammar Police everywhere.

So I won’t be surprised is CBS/Paramount finds a way to rein in what they see as Axanar Productions’ excesses in producing their fan film(s), but I will be surprised if there’s a ruling that curtails study and development of Klingon. I’m aware of trademark erosion, where brand names like Kleenex and Xerox become generic terms for facial tissue and copying respectively. This seems more in the copyright realm, so I don’t know what legal precedents may apply.

But again, as I mentioned in Letting Go of the Canon, the mere mortals have fire. Trying to copyright an entire language, even though it is a constructed one, appears unprecedented. Will the lawyers attempt to relate this to a computer code? I used the term “open-source” above and that might give some guidance to how people can and cannot make “derivative works” to this original “work-for-hire.” (Okay, so originally it was, “Hey James Doohan, can you help us out for a minute?” if Klingon origin stories are correct).

I may have to bug some lawyers I know on this one.

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