Who "owns" the "Klingon" language?

Do you Speak Klingon?   Is that really a language?  Should people fight about it?

A federal judge gets an earful of Klingon proverbs from a language society intent on making sure that Paramount Pictures can't claim ownership.

A California (yea, you knew "only in California") Federal Judge is hearing the copyright case over whether the owner of the Star Trek enterprise has a copyright on the Klingon "language".  Paramount Pictures is claiming ownership to the use of the Klingon terms.

Not So Fast, says the Language Creation Society.  They claim in their briefing that thousands of people have studied Klingon and use it to communicate with each other.  Therefore, Klingon is an established language and can't be copyrighted.  They estimate that there are at least 250,000 copies of the Klingon dictionary.  Furthermore, even Microsoft (Bing) has a English-to-Klingon translator.

Paramount pictures claims that the language is "wholly fictitious, original and copyrightable."  Further, the studio claims that because there are no real Klingons with whom to communicate, the "language" is clearly no language at all.

The full briefings of the parties will be May 9th.

maw', qar'a'?  (you KNOW you want to look it up)


You can find the Amicus brief here:  http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/star-trek-lawsuit-debate-klingon-888419