(sorry, computer been down a few days and still slowly reinstalling
everything...)
At this point, using logic to argue this point is useless. Unicode
doesn't care if you've got a great argument--and rightly they should
not! A really killer argument might be helpful if you get to a court
case, but by then the damage has been done. There's no point in musing
about whether or not we "should" be okay; Unicode needs more assurance
than that (though they won't tell me quite what.)
~mark
On 5/27/26 10:14 AM, Vikki McDonough via Unicode wrote:
(Sorry if this comes across as me just rehashing the subject, BTW, but
I only just now [as in, just a few minutes ago] came across the
below-linked material.)
Didn't the U.S. Copyright Office definitively state several years back
that writing systems *themselves* (as distinct from the fonts used to
*display* those writing systems) are not copyrightable
(https://web.archive.org/web/20160304062736/http://www.ipmall.info/hosted_resources/CopyrightAppeals/2004/Mark%20Hendricksen.pdf,
linked in
https://unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2016-m11/0048.html), the
claims of those systems' creators to the contrary notwithstanding?
- Vikki McDonough 🏳️⚧️
On Wed, May 27, 2026, 8:58 AM Doug Ewell <[email protected]> wrote:
Because the nature of the uniquely hostile IP situation was not
fully understood until relatively recently.
—Doug
Sent via the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra 5G, an AT&T 5G smartphone
Get Outlook for Android <https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* Unicode <[email protected]> on behalf of
Vikki McDonough via Unicode <[email protected]>
*Sent:* Wednesday, May 27, 2026 7:54:58 AM
*To:* Mark E. Shoulson <[email protected]>; [email protected]
<[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: Seeming hostility to conlang scripts?
Why, then, did Tengwar and Cirth manage to get on the SMP roadmap
and stay there until very recently (something *none* of the other
conlang scripts managed), if they faced a uniquely-hostile IP
situation?
- Vikki McDonough 🏳️⚧️
On Tue, May 26, 2026, 5:57 PM Mark E. Shoulson via Unicode
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 5/26/26 6:32 PM, Rebecca Bettencourt via Unicode wrote:
> Unicode's "hostility" to conlang scripts has actually been
> *decreasing* over the years. Such proposals used to be rejected
> outright for not being notable or not having a large enough
user
> community. That is not the case anymore. Klingon, Sitelen Pona,
> Tengwar, and Cirth have all actually been recognized as
having a large
> enough user community; the objections being raised now are
actually
> much more complicated issues to navigate: copyright status
and stability.
>
> Unicode does not want to include Klingon without a letter from
> Paramount's legal department stating that they will not sue
anyone who
> implements it, but Paramount simply does not care enough to
spend
> legal resources on that. Tengwar and Cirth are in the hands
of the
> Tolkien estate, which is extremely controlling about the use
of their
> intellectual property and is not going to give permission to
encode
> them. And while it's legally questionable whether a writing
system can
> actually be copyrighted, Unicode does not have the resources
to find out.
It should be noted, though, that the only *official* reason for
rejection of Klingon is still "because we don't want to be
associated
with Those Kinds of People." The proposal to reject Klingon
(https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2001/01212-RejectKlingon.html),
adopted by
Unicode (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2001/01183.htm) mentions
nothing
about IP problems or lack of usage. This remains the reason
it is on
the "Not to be Encoded" list, even though (at the suggestion
of Ken
Whistler
https://unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2016-m11/0091.html)
there was a proposal not to approve it, but just to remove it
from the
"No" list
(https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21155-klingon-req.pdf)
Removing it from the "Not Encoded" list would have been a way
to signal
a lessening of hostility without actually doing anything (and
thus
without running risks of IP problems.)
Has the hostility been decreasing over the years? Perhaps, even
probably. There has been unofficial recognition that "lack of
usage" is
no longer a valid argument against Klingon (after a new proposal,
https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16329-piqad-returns.pdf
showed a great
deal of usage.) But there still seems to be something in the
"dignity
argument" (Klingon is beneath the dignity of Unicode, because
only nerds
speak it), brought down explicitly in the Proposal to Reject
linked
above and on this mailing list
https://corp.unicode.org/pipermail/unicode/2021-September/009589.html
AFAIK, Sitelen Pona is, indeed, insufficiently fleshed out
(but I may
not be well-enough informed), and the Tolkien estate has come out
explicitly against the encoding of Cirth and Tengwar (which I
think
deserve encoding more than Klingon does, but whose IP
situation is
rather more clear against it.)
Several new writing systems which have been encoded are no
older than
some conlang scripts, like Adlam (1989), Osage (2006),
Signwriting
(1974) (and honestly, the IP status of some of them is not
clear either,
though it's definitely an issue in things like Blissymbolics
and I think
maybe Mandombe), so it clearly isn't a matter of needing to be
an *old*
established system... just an established one, and these did
demonstrate
usage and a community.
So, yeah, the hostility may be on the decline. It's still the
official
stance, though.
~mark
