On 2016-11-08, Mark E. Shoulson <[email protected]> wrote: > I've heard that there are similar questions regarding tengwar and cirth, > but it is notable that UTC *did* see fit to consider this question for > them and determine that they were worthy of encoding (they are on the > roadmap), even though they have not actually followed through on that > yet, perhaps because of these very IP concerns. Notably, pIqaD is not
The Tolkien Estate considers that the tengwar constitute a work of art, and it's not willing to see them in Unicode, because this would hinder its ability to pursue people using tengwar for what it considers inappropriate purposes. (I finally asked them a couple of years ago for permission to encode, based on Michael Everson's draft proposal from yonks ago, and that's the summary of their reply.) Several years ago, I was told on this list that it would be up to the proposers to deal with this, and that the Unicode Consortium would have no interest in taking on the 800lb legal gorilla that is the Tolkien Estate. (Now a 24M£ gorilla with what it got from New Line Cinema.) If some wealthy Unicode Consortium member feels like paying for an American counsel's opinion that the Estate is just trying it on, feel free! -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
