On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 10:42 AM David Faulks <davidj_faulks@yahoo.ca> wrote:
There is another issue of course, which I think could be a huge obstacle: the Trademark/Copyright issue. Paramount claims copyright over the entire Klingon language (presumably including the script). The issue has recently gone to court. Encoding criteria for symbols (and this likely extends to letters) is against encoding them without the permission of the Copyright/Trademark holder.
The US copyright office will not register letters for copyright: cf. http://web.archive.org/web/20160304062736/http://www.ipmall.info/hosted_resources/CopyrightAppeals/2004/Mark%20Hendricksen.pdf
So the copyright issue is not relevant here.
On the face of it, the cited statement seems
to very broadly reject the copyrightability of alphabets and writing
systems, tracing that decision back to statements of intent
around the copyright legislation.
Given that, I'd tend to concur with Doug that UTC should feel free to discuss this on the merit, but that in the case of a positive outcome the Consortium would of course have counsel review this issue. Given that this won't be the only writing system for which the original invention post-dates modern IP laws, it would probably be good to have some clarity here.
A./
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