[lojban] Re: Loglan

[Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>]

At 07:05 PM 12/5/02 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> >>> Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU> 12/05/02 12:05pm >>>
>#On Wednesday, December 4, 2002, at 07:18  PM, And Rosta wrote:
>#> Robin:
>#>> The
>#>> *instant* I discovered that Loglan was copywritten, I dropped it in
>#>> favour of lojban
>#>
>#> Yes, that is a good reason. (I am assuming you mean what I would call
>#> "copyrighted" and not "copywritten".) I have never seen a TLI
>#> statement of its position on copyright, though.
>#
>#Why is that a good reason? It may have spooked the learly lojbanistani,
>#but an attorney friend with considerable expertise in intellectual
>#property rights tells me that such a claim would be laughed out of a
>#courtroom. Alas, there is nothing certain in law but the expense. As
>#And points out, there isn't any vocabulary copyright statement in the
>#TLI materials.
>
>I gather from frenzied debate about the copyright of invented languages,
>especially Tolkien's, that the question is VERY unclear and has not been
>settled by any actual court cases (the Loglan one being a trademark
>suit). The mainstream opinion seemed to be that copyright wouldn't
>extend to *using* an invented language, but it might extend to compiling
>grammars and dictionaries of it, though those activities might still fall
>under fair use.

You do not need a copyright statement in order to have copyright.  All 
materials are presumed copyrighted unless explicitly placed in the public 
domain.  The presence or absence of a copyright notice affects whether and 
how much damages can be claimed from a copyright violation.

Actually there are precedents on language copyrights, though in the realm 
of computer languages.  In general they ensured the death of the language 
in question.

However, before JCB had asserted all these intellectual property claims, he 
had repeatedly published public statements effectively placing the language 
in the public domain, or at least granting unrestricted permission to use 
the language, so Nora and I had no doubt that we could win.

Copyright, it turned out, was a poor arena to challenge JCB in.  First of 
all, the laws in Canada and the UK on copyright were MUCH more favorable to 
an author than in the US, so that we might have had to fight the battle 
multiple times.  Furthermore, even in the US, it is possible to copyright a 
dictionary and even a wordlist, but the question of whether use of a list 
violates that copyright gets tricky.

One problem is that a copyright suit would have been in the regular court 
system, and the legal costs are MUCH higher there, probably $50,000 and 
up.  The trademark case, cost us $20K in legal fees and that only because 
JCB appealed the decision.  It was a sure win for us (the law and the facts 
were entirely favorable to us), and it was (as it turned out to be) a way 
to demonstrate to JCB that legal challenges were not the way to work out 
our problems.

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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