In Paramount’s original complaint [PDF] against the filmmakers, the studio listed a number of exclusive rights it contends it holds with regard to the Star Trek universe — “characters, themes, plots, dialogue, settings, sequences, situations, and incidents therein, and also the props, character makeup, costumes, sets, fictional language, events, and fictional history.” 
 
 Klingon, as you’re likely aware, is a fictional language originally created for use in the Star Trek films and TV shows, but which is now also spoken by fans around the world, both in and outside of the context of Star Trek. Nowhere in its 1,288 compendium does the U.S. “As the Supreme Court held in the context of a system of bookkeeping, although copyright protects the author’s expression of the system, it does not prevent others from using the system.” 
 
 This week, Paramount fired back, arguing in its response [PDF] that the filmmakers’ claim is this argument is “absurd, since a language is only useful if it can be used to communicate with people, and there are no Klingons with whom to communicate.” 
 
 The studio says that the filmmakers’ use of the Klingon language in their movie, which has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from supporters, is “simply further evidence of their infringement of Plaintiffs’ characters, since speaking this fictitious language is an aspect of their characters.” 
 
 So who is in the right on this one? Adelman acknowledges that authors may be tempted to assert a copyright claim over the use of a fictional or constructed language “to prolong her control of the language’s dissemination and development,” but concludes that this sort of copyright claim is “both misguided and likely to fail.” 
 
 In fact, Adelman’s note specifically cites the ways in which Paramount has previously established its authority over the use of Klingon. Ever since linguist Marc Okrand formalized his work on the Klingon language as a consultant on Star Trek films and published The Klingon Dictionary, the legal status of the synthetic language has been the subject of controversy.
– Live long and copyright many things. Thus Paramount Pictures hopes to prosper as it wages a legal battle with the makers of popular Kickstarter crowdfunded Star Trek fan film Prelude to Axanar. Paramount claims the film's use of the fictional language Klingon adds up to copyright infringement; the filmmakers contend that attempting to copyright Klingon is absurd given the language is an "idea or a system." For legal precedent, they cite the system of bookkeeping: "Although copyright protects the author’s expression of the system, it does not prevent others from using the system." But there's doesn't appear to be a quick and easy answer. The US Copyright Office doesn't specifically "deal with the copyrightability of constructed or fictional languages, let alone Klingon," observes Consumerist, which was unable to dig up much in the way of case law on the matter. Paramount, which claims exclusive ownership over many Star Trek features, including characters, themes, plots, dialogue, settings, props, character makeup, costumes, sets, fictional language, and so forth, has responded to the filmmakers' plea by noting that "a language is only useful if it can be used to communicate with people, and there are no Klingons with whom to communicate," reports TorrentFreak. By allowing the characters in Prelude to speak Klingon, they assert, the film is infringing on Paramount's characters because speaking the language "is an aspect of their characters." The jury's still out, but Boing Boing goes so far as to call this Paramount's attempt to "kill" the film, and it frames Paramount's claims as "dubious," in part because it borrows phonemes (from Hindi, Arabic, etc.) as well as grammar (from Japanese, Turkish, etc.)—not to mention it's spoken by many fans around the world. (Here's one wild use of Klingon in the real world.)