RE: [lojban] Re: Some ideas/questions (long)

[Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>]

At 08:49 PM 5/5/03 -0400, Craig wrote:
> >> 1. The courts have ruled that you can't copyright a language. This is how
> >> Lojban is legal, when it is an offshoot of Loglan.
>
> >What the court ruled was that "Loglan" was a generic term and not
> >trademarkable, that's all.  The question of copyrightability was
> >not challenged by the LLG because the words had already been remade.
>
>But we copied most of the grammar, no? Oskar's proposed new language would
>not have all its words in common with lojban - it couldn't, as they would be
>monosyllables.

The grammar design and concepts were recovered, but not copied.

I devised the YACC grammar from scratch, aided by Jeff Taylor and Jeff 
Prothero and later by John Cowan who took the job over.  I explicit avoided 
copying the original text and even the elements of that text.  The rule of 
copyright in the US is that an algorithm or idea cannot be copyrighted, but 
only the expression of that idea in a medium.  Since in fact I knew nothing 
of YACC when I started, there was a lot of groping in the dark at 
first.  However, Taylor had gotten his Masters Degree by devising a 
from-scratch SLR1 formal grammar for TLI Loglan, and he taught me how to go 
about building a grammar piece by piece.

Meanwhile, we had secondary coverage on this because Jeff Prothero was 
himself the one who devised the first successful TLI Loglan YACC grammar 
covering the bulk of the language (others had done pieces of the language) 
while a student at the U of Washington, and he had never signed any rights 
over to TLI.  Prothero in particular invented the use of the "error" token 
to define elidable terminators which is a key feature that TLI Loglan and 
Lojban both share.  Prothero expressly gave us permission in case it proved 
needed, and also made it clear to JCB that if he challenged Prothero's 
prior rights to use the grammar, Prothero would turn the matter over to the 
U of Washington which would have prior rights to TLI over any copyright 
deriving from a student's work using campus assets.  This killed the 
copyright issue of the grammar, EXCEPT perhaps to the exact statement of 
that grammar in TLI's public works.


As to the specific topic at hand, copyright is not an issue because the 
Lojban design has expressly been placed in the public domain to make sure 
that it cannot be an issue.  Some specific documents, like CLL, are 
copyrighted as DESCRIPTIONS of the grammar, but word lists and the YACC 
grammar are completely free for use.

Note that in Britain and possible other countries, somewhat tougher 
standards exist on derivative works than in the US.  But our express 
placement of materials into the public domain should prevent questions even 
there.

For someone wanting monosyllables with no lujvo, BTW, the idea is old and 
there already is a conlang developed on that basis.  Rex May's Ceqli 
started as precisely this modification to TLI Loglan.  I have no idea how 
his current language relates to Loglan or Lojban though.

lojbab

-- 
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                    703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:                 http://www.lojban.org



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