Paramount and CBS File Lawsuit Against Crowdfunded, Indie Star Trek Movie (hollywoodreporter.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Back in August, an Indiegogo campaign raised $566,023 to produce Axanar, a Star Trek movie in development by an independent group of fans, who also happen to be film professionals. Now, unfortunately but predictably, Paramount and CBS have filed a lawsuit in California federal court claiming their intellectual property is being infringed upon. They are "demanding an injunction as well as damages for direct, contributory and vicarious copyright infringement." The guy running the crowdfunded film is a lawyer, and he said, "We've certainly been prepared for this and we certainly will defend this lawsuit. There are a lot of issues surrounding a fan film. These fan films have been around for 30 years, and others have raised a lot of money." He said CBS/Paramount weren't willing to provide guidelines on what types of fan productions would be tolerated (unlike Lucasfilm with Star Wars), because they worry about setting precedent.

Comments

Public Theft...

[WCLPeter]

And thanks to those same companies lobbying efforts they're still able to enforce copyright on something, which by all rights, should have entered the Public Domain 21 years ago.

So much for the continued progress of the arts and science, Axanar looked like an interesting project - it was the first "real" Trek I'd seen in years and I was looking forward to the feature.

Been wondering if we couldn't use corporate law against them in this case, by pushing for ever longer terms they're missing out on profits - corporations are mandated to maximize profits. Paramount, by lobbying to extend the term lengths, is missing out on that sweet sweet Star Wars money (which should also be in the public domain) and thereby depriving their shareholders of a potential revenue steam.

I'm not a lawyer but I'd have to wonder if these guys could get some Paramount shares and counter sue?

Re:Rules of fan films:

[KGIII]

Call me skeptical but this sounds more like a lawyer who is going to intentionally cause some disruption, get sued, and then use the donations to pay for legal fees (providing an income) and maybe get them some fame (providing an income) even if they don't actually win their case.

"Oh, hi! I was doing this thing and I knew damned well that doing this was going to get me sued. If each of you help donate then we can fight this miscarriage of justice! We can thwart this hydra known as Paramount and the IP-cartels. All I need now, I just happen to be a lawyer, is some money to help keep this project afloat. You can send money by PayPal, BitCoin, Check, Money Order, or wire it directly to this account! Thank you for helping to keep this project alive and, keep in mind, if you donate this much money - we'll even try to ship a product and you'll get some bonus material if you help by donating even more money to our legal defense team!"

Yeah, I'm cynical, skeptical, jaded, disillusioned, disenfranchised, disgusted, pragmatic, and grouchy. However, it's rather convenient to have a lawyer on-board and one who mentions that they anticipated the lawsuit ahead of time. Perhaps there's some altruism, some shred of dignity, some actual intent to create...