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Zinho [soylentnews.org] writes:

A legal battle is heating up between the producers of a Star Trek fan film, Anaxar, and Paramount (the corporation that owns Star Trek). Paramount is suing the film producers, claiming not only trademark over the iconic alien races and the look and feel of their equipment, but also copyright ownership of the language they speak. This became interesting when a lawyer, representing Pro Bono the Language Creation Society [conlang.org] (LCS), filed an Amicus brief arguing that Klingon has moved beyond the point where anyone can logically own it, and has taken on a life of its own. For bonus points, part of the brief was written in Klingon.

Paramount Copyright Claim on Klingon Language Challenged in Klingon Language; [reason.com] Paramount's arguments lack reason, or "meq Hutlh."
Is Klingon A Living Language? That's For (Human) Courts To Decide [npr.org] (NPR Broadcast recording and transcript)
Why a lawyer wrote a legal brief partially in Klingon [pri.org] (listen to the recording for this one, it's particularly funny and to-the-point)

Paramount, for its part, predictably stands by its claim; [reason.com] they say that they made it, and Klingons aren't real anyway, so they should be able to own copyright on the language.

This argument is of interest to the tech world as well, as some of the same arguments can be made regarding computer language. A person or corporation can create a computer language, but what control then does it give them over how that language is used? The brief touches on various famous software cases such as Oracle America, Inc. v. Google, Inc [wikipedia.org] and Computer Associates International, Inc. v. Altai Inc. [wikipedia.org] The broad issues of whether copyright can/should be applied to a language as a whole affect both the Constructed Language community and the world of programming.

The LCS' page covering the Axanar case [conlang.org] has an impressive list of further reading on this topic; the Internet has made this into a meme and discussion of it has gone viral.

Original Submission