: Re: Can I use already used fictional language? When creating a world where there are either aliens or fantasy races, you know that they should speak their own language. But the truth is, that for

@Annie587

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I am not a layer, but I doubt the courts would recognize a copyright in an invented language.

I'm assuming you're not actually copying complete sentences and paragraphs, but rather individual words, and applying the rules of an invented grammar.

The publishers of an English dictionary certainly couldn't sue you because you wrote a book consisting entirely of words from their dictionary. Yes, Webster did not invent the English words, while the publisher of the Klingon dictionary presumably did. Is that sufficient difference? I don't think so. The U.S. Copyright office explicitly says that you cannot copyright individual words or phrases. www.copyright.gov/title37/202/37cfr202-1.html I think that would rule out copyrighting individual words in a dictionary, even if you used many of them. Likewise you cannot copyright "ideas, plans, or methods", which I think would prevent copyright an invented grammar. (Maybe, possibly, you could patent it. That's a different thing.)

But as I say, I'm not a lawyer. And judges regularly make rulings that strike me as completely contrary to common sense, so "makes sense to me" and "is what a judge would say if it went to court" are not at all the same thing. I couldn't find anything on the Internet about copyrights suits over an invented language, so I don't know if there's any precedent either way.

All that said, even assuming you were assured that you were on solid legal ground, why would you want to? If I was reading a book set in a universe that in no way is derived from Star Trek, and the characters are speaking Klingon, I would find that very distracting and disconcerting. It would be like reading a book set in Canada and all the Canadians speaking Swahili. I'd just constantly be saying, What? Why?

I think it would be much safer to just make up your own language. Unless characteristics of the language itself are an important element of the story, I doubt think there would be any need to actually work out a complete grammar and vocabulary. Just make up some words that have the sound that you want it to have. Beyond making sure that you don't contradict yourself, like in chapter one saying that "nowbarg" means "green" and in chapter two saying that it means "perihelion", what difference does it make? I suppose if I was going to write a story with a made-up language I might invent a few simple grammar rules, like decide on some verb endings or conventional order of words in a sentence. But I wouldn't write a complete grammar and dictionary. Any more than if I set a story in a fictional city that I would find it necessary to draw a complete map of the city with names of the business or resident at every address.

Update *

The Oracle v Google decision referenced by @KeithS is fascinating to me as a software developer. I've just spent the morning reading it (instead of doing my job). www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders//2013-1021.12-10-12.1.pdf -- a good and scary read for software developers.

This is really getting off-track, but what the case was all about was this:
The court ruled that API declarations are copyrightable. Google copied 7,000 lines of Java code from Oracle without permission. Google argued in court that this code is not copyrightable because you cannot copyright an idea. The courts have repeatedly ruled that if a particular set of words is the only possible way to express an idea, or one of a small set of possible ways, than those words are not copyrightable. The court agreed that the Java language of itself is not copyrightable, because it is an idea, but that the specific text of the API declarations is copyrightable.

But here's the kicker: the court said that the principle of "only one way to express an idea" applies at the time the program was written, not at the time it was copied. That is, the court says that Oracle CAN copyright a collection of function names as long as they are not the only possible names that could have been given to those functions AT THE TIME THEY WERE WRITTEN. They give the example that the "max" function, that finds which of two number is larger, could just as well have been called "maximum" or "larger" or many other possible names, and that Google could have used some other name for their implementation of Java. But IMHO, this is absurd. If Google called the function something else, the compiler they wrote wouldn't be Java any more, but a new language. The issue is that, now that Java exists, if you want to make a Java-compatible API, you have to copy the function names. So while the court gives lip service to the principle that a programming language is an idea that cannot be copyrighted, by allowing Oracle to copyright the API they make it practically impossible for anyone to implement an alternative implementation. And, by the way, the court completely contradicts a precedent that they cite: the author of a book on accounting sued other writers for copying his forms, and the courts ruled that, as the layout of the form and the names of columns etc are essential to using his accounting system, and as the system itself is not copyrightable, then the forms and terminology are not copyrightable. Sounds to me like the obvious analogy of their precedent is that an API is not copyrightable. But they somehow came to the opposite conclusion. As a software developer, I find this scary stuff.

But getting back to the case at hand, it's not at all clear that this would be a precedent against using someone else's invented language. Oracle's complaint was that Google used their code to create their (Google's) own version of Java. At no point did Oracle say that anyone who USES the Java language is violating their copyrights. That is, they are not claiming that writing a program in the Java language violates their copyright.

The fair analogy would be this: If you invented your own fake language for a book and wrote a grammar and dictionary for it, and that language used many of the elements of Star Trek's Klingon, and in your grammar/dictionary you copied thousands of lines of text from a Klingon grammar/dictionary published by the Star Trek people, they could use this as a precedent to sue you.

But if you simply USED Klingon in a book that you wrote, nothing in this decision says that Star Trek would have any case against you.

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