Correct me if I am wrong, CBS brought an IP suit against Culture Club (1980'something) for their hook line "Karma karma karma" infringing on CBS's copyrighted hook line of "come a, come a, come a". I believe CBS lost that case.
(For entertainment value only)
Because 5 minutes just won't be enough, here's a little help for extending the suit past the 1st episode. How many actors (fan or professional) actually pull off the Klingon language anyway? Do you Q'apla, Qapla', Ca'plow, Kaplate? Has each C/P movie and episode ever been perfectly consistent pronouncing Klingon? If not how could CBS declare it unique?
Are all Vulcan ears the same or are they simply copies from early vampire flicks?
I'm not totally sure what is being got at here, so feel free to fill me in, but to the idea that the actors may not have spoken Klingon -- they aren't aliens either, but C/P still can copyright the concept the actors are representing.
Yes.
Klingon is a pretty fantastically interesting language simply as a linguistic matter; it's grammar and vocabulary are self-consistent and plausible, but, by taking the weirdest parts of many real-world languages, it ends up feeling deeply alien. Get rid of the fun axioms and the costumes, and you still have something recognizable as, and worthy of attention as, Klingon.
Of course, that drives off all the people who are in it for the bloodwine, but your Tolkien-style language nerds are still going to value it because they're in it for the language.
I believe that answer short-circuits the rest of the thought experiment.
Soliciting this sort of thought is why I asked. It is interesting that it might have this quality. But is this amalgamation of weird parts from many languages a work for hire by the studio? If so, wouldn't you also need to remove this factor to be consistent with the thought experiment?
I don't see this in the filing. Possibly I missed it, but I think you may be referring to this passage:
...but the filing is clear that this translation is not imposed by "backstory concepts about Klingon culture", but by the grammatical structure and vocabulary in the language itself. Excise all evidence of Paramount/CBS IP from the Klingon language, and you still have to translate the Sesame Street opening this way. (I do not know enough Klingon to verify this is true, but it is what the filing says, and seems entirely plausible from what I do know of Klingon.)
Yes, that's it. More broadly to the point, there is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Klingon_Hamlet
This example of "translating" Hamlet is entirely based upon shifting it into the story framework of Klingon culture. It chose to harness the Klingon culture backstory deeply.
This is why I made the comparison with Japanese. It also had to shift the content to the culture, it wasn't literally a translation like a scientific one. Translation often uses comparable cultural references from what I have seen.
And in general, if you took Trek idioms and backstories and character references out of English, it would still be English. If you took all that out of Klingon, what would remain? And wrt/ the unusual pastiche of language elements, if you took all language elements originated from the Orkrand dictionary and guides out of Klingon, what would remain?
Finally, if a specific framework for Klingon was defined by the studios, and fans simply amplified on it and remained in conformance with it, depending on studio-originated "Klingon culture" (how would this culture express this idea), and "Klingon lanugage" (how would this grammar framework achieve this additional grammar) to make the language extensions, isn't this a derivative work of a copyrighted product?
Now to go to the side of the KLI:
http://www.finnegan.com/resources/a...spx?news=9cbb473b-f87b-47eb-8d4b-0202ad56343a
this article suggests that a licensee owns derived works made during the license period, depending on the terms of the license. So it would be interesting to see the terms of the KLI license.
I'm not trying to grind any axe here. I think there's a real exposure for Klingon because of how intimately it is interwoven with the published IP of the studio both in language elements and story lines.
), the more I realize his intent, while not 100% clear, is also not 100% positive. He's trying to do something here to undermine something. Whether that be the reporters here, or our conversation, I'm not sure. But he will not succeed. We've done this for four and a half months without him. And we'll do it long after he gives up the fight.
