Axanar Project Sued

posted on December 30th, 2015, 10:41 pm

CBS and Paramount have jointly filed legal action for copyright infringement on the Axanar fan film project.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/crowdfunded-star-trek-movie-draws-851474?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=THR+Breaking+News_now_2015-12-30+06%3A34%3A00_HLewis&utm_term=hollywoodreporter_breakingnews

A member of the project has responded on their facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/StarTrekAxanar/posts/887198424728015

While I'd love for them to win, I don't have much hope. Even the cost of defending the action will eat up most of their budget.

I've seen some speculation that this may be related to the the 2017 series, or that Paramount persuaded them to mount the suit to stifle competition in the year of "Beyond".

Today, everyone in the fan community has lost, as this is bound to create a chilling effect on any crowdfunded project.

posted on December 31st, 2015, 5:12 am

so star trek should be monopol, no outside ideas, no healty competion, just what CBS feed us....

sad day indeed.... And i was hoping that Axanar will show how miserable the alternate timeline in last two trek movies was...

axanar was suposed to set future aim of how star trek shoul be...

posted on December 31st, 2015, 3:13 pm

why they have a problem now after all the time this project has been around, obviously due to them being worried about it competing with there own developments.

they didn't have a problem with star trek renegades and that wasn't good at all. of gods and men was even worse and again, that didn't get shut down why?

its not that they are worried bad films ruin of damage the name of the franchise,
its that they are worried they will be upstaged and loose money if people get as good or better content elsewhere

posted on December 31st, 2015, 3:22 pm

I've seen some suggestions that not all was well with the Axanar project. Apparently Tony Todd separated from the project with a couple of cryptic tweets, one having the hashtag #tellthetruth. And uglier rumours, too.

This is leading me to wonder if there is more to the lawsuit than just "Studio wants to tread on necks".

posted on January 8th, 2016, 5:33 am

Man, reminds me of the nineties, when Paramount and Viacom cracked down on fan sites and C&Ded so many out of existence. Some were legitimately were hosting infringing material like leaked prop shots for First Contact or leaked scripts for Generations, but a lot were just innocent sites they shotgunned for no reason other than that they could.

But as MadHatter points out, there may well be something more to this than Paramount being embarrassed that a fan work is better than their star trek 2 fanfiction was.

posted on January 8th, 2016, 6:41 pm

It's not like I liked this Axanar thing anyways, but this kind of business practice more than enough for me to boycott the coming new series...

I find it quite funny that in the 21st century after the rise of the internet, lawmakers and the general public still does not understand that no such thing exists as "intellectual property". As you cannot own someone else's thoughts, you cannot have a claim on intellectual property since it's not an alienable product or service.