Klingon under attack.

steingar

steingar

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Sort've long story. Some fans crowd sourced a Star Trek movie that became Prelude to Axanar. most fan productions are amateurish to say the least, and Paramount, the home of everything Star Trek, have cast a blind eye. But the Axanar folks had money, and made a slick production with pro actors (several from the Star Trek series) and slick special effects. Paramount called foul.

As part of the lawsuit the Axanar folks asked Paramount to list those aspects of Star Trek they found proprietary. One of them was the Klingon language. And here is where is gets interesting. Klingon was originally invented by the linguist Marc Okrand for the third Star Trek movie (here is a video of Dr. Okrand describing his invention.

The problem is Klingon has gone well beyond the sparse dialog in the Star Trek movies to a complete language of greater than 25,000 words. It has been used internationally. The bible and the works of Shakespeare have been translated into Klingon. So is Klingon simply copyrightable dialog, or is it a language? A judge in US Federal court will decide.

As I've heard John Bodice say, hard cases make bad law.

What a good thread for Star Wars day.
 
It's greed pure and simple. Someone finally made a fan movie that rivals big studio versions and Paramount pitched a cry fest.

I bet it and hope it will be based on the original creator's wish. Most actors and support staff love the fan based material.


I hope the ruling of this case doesn't spill over and affect the Ready Player One movie. That thing is already a copyright nightmare and I'm hoping Spielberg has enough swing to pull off the brand rights. That movie can survive with a few brands missing, but if the key ones are it won't live up to the book.
 
I cannot even imagine all the rights holders that Ready Player One must be having to deal with. A huge amount of them are still owned by Japanese companies, and have been out of production for many years. I can also see a few big companies here, I am looking at you Blizzard, starting up lawsuits claiming a few of the base concepts in the book/movie are stolen from them as well.

I really hope they get it right, because the book was great.
 
Blindrage said:
I cannot even imagine all the rights holders that Ready Player One must be having to deal with. A huge amount of them are still owned by Japanese companies, and have been out of production for many years. I can also see a few big companies here, I am looking at you Blizzard, starting up lawsuits claiming a few of the base concepts in the book/movie are stolen from them as well.

I really hope they get it right, because the book was great.
Click to expand...

These companies should see the huge advertising benefit of this movie and of course the book. What is Blizzard suing Ready Player One over? The use of avatars ???
 
Klingon was invented in 1985 and has been built upon by many others. IMO, the genie is way out of the bottle on this one. If they wanted to claim it copyright they should have done it long before now. They have set the precedent with the last 30 years of it being an open language that they never intended to control the use of the language. I have a friend who once taught Klingon as a linguistics course at the local community college, I wonder what Paramount has to say about that.

I suspect one legal term being debated is "defense of laches", which basically means a failure to defend it before invalidates your claim now. Congress has set a 3 year statue of limitations, so the question becomes whether the copyright has been considered abandoned because of the 30 years of failure to claim it or does the 3 years apply solely to the new instance. The open source nature of Klingon, including the public domain improvements, changes and use of it seem to me to land on the side of Axanar.

If a company allows free use of their material for 30 years without comment but then suddenly claims copyright, it creates a kind of trap because from the 30 years of history, everyone would expect that copyright was not claimed. I think that if I was convinced that the copyright could be claimed, I would also have to rule in favor of a counter suit claiming damages for the deception in not enforcing it before now.

Makes you wonder why Paramount would be so tied up over what is essentially a fan-fiction.
 
I'm still floored by the news that someone (or someones) thought it was worth the incredible time and effort to translate the Bible and Shakespeare's works into Klingon. :eek:
 
Paramount's problem is missing the vig. They should be thrilled with all fan attempts to breathe more life into one of their cash cows. It only paves the way for more movies and TV series regardless of the quality. What they really should be doing is getting off their collective asses and answering these fan based movies with better quality stories and movies. Lord knows, there are more than enough stories out there that stay true to the original theme without warping the universe that is Star Trek.
When does any language become a real language; when more than one person can speak it? Is pig latin a real language? The intent of Okrand was to create a language that sounded foreign enough to be alien and still maintain the concepts, syntax, and rules of any language. To give Klingon some realism and believability. It's obviously a success and has grown beyond what Okrand had done. Does making something better violate patent or copyright, and can someone really patent or copyright a language? And if so, can I copyright the English language?
Isn't Klingon relagated to pop culture status now? When does something become common day, where it moves from trademark like Kleenex or kleenex. Is it when bing adds it to their universal translator http://mashable.com/2013/05/14/bing-klingon/#h0_C5es9Kqqu .
According to Arina Okrent, there are over 900 such languages. J.R.R. Token said he wrote the Hobbit only to have a platform for his language.
What about individual words like repudiate? Should Sarah sue every time someone similarly abuses English?
I like the Star Trek stories, mainly because there is so little good sci-fi in the media. Keeping the universe moving forward should be a good thing. Paramount should grow up, get serious, and fight back with better products.
 
Once upon a time there was a company called the Universal Tube and Rollform Company. And, they had a web site utube.com.

Then, along came youtube, and U-Tube just got swamped "In August 2006, the company's website received 68 million hits".[Wikipedia]

What did they do?

Did they realize they were sitting on a gold mine?

No. They saw it as a problem. "On October 30, 2006, the company took legal action against YouTube over the website confusion."
[Wikipedia]

Eventually, they figured it out. But it took a while.
 
Why would anyone be dumb enough to try and make a movie using the well-known intellectual property of another? Why would anyone be stupid enough to donate money to such an endeavor? If they had ripped off my intellectual property, I'd sue the pants off them as well. I'm on Paramount's side on this one. I'm all for people crowd-funding to make a movie, as I'd love to see the power taken away from the big studios, but do something original.
 
I've had several job applicants list Klingon language skills on their applications over the years.

Rich
 
I thought this thread would be about toilet paper...
 
Rykymus said:
Why would anyone be dumb enough to try and make a movie using the well-known intellectual property of another? Why would anyone be stupid enough to donate money to such an endeavor? If they had ripped off my intellectual property, I'd sue the pants off them as well. I'm on Paramount's side on this one. I'm all for people crowd-funding to make a movie, as I'd love to see the power taken away from the big studios, but do something original.
Click to expand...

Do you think think it's significantly different than someone writing a fan fiction story and publishing it on the internet? There are probably several thousand (mostly bad) Star Trek stories written by fans which utilize all the elements of the Star Trek universe plus some and Paramount has never objected to them.

What makes a fan movie different than a fan story?
 
Fan fiction writers don't collect money from donors. Most of them don't make any money off their fan fiction either. Making a movie, on the other hand, has potential to earn revenue, and possibly even take away revenue from the owner of that intellectual property. Technically, they should go after the fan fiction writers as well, but you have to draw the line somewhere. I mean, do you prosecute the lady in the supermarket for tasting a grape, or do you wait for her to try to smuggle the whole bag of grapes out of the store without paying.
 
Making a movie has zero potential to earn revenue if the owner does not sell anything.
 
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