This is the 17th entry in an ongoing series about Star Trek fandom and its future called Crisis of Infinite Star Treks. Based on today’s updates, I’ll be writing about this through Spring 2017. Who woulda thunk it?
While this amounts to legal maneuvers around the Axanar Lawsuit, a judge issued a ruling on Monday that will allow the lawsuit to move forward. Essentially, it’s a rejection of Axanar’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, but there’s some other interesting language bundled into the ruling.
Megan Geuss’s piece in Ars Technica mentions some of the main points. Axanar Productions was attempting a tactical delay by saying CBS/Paramount was jumping the gun in the suit in suing a work that didn’t exist yet. The judge pointed to Axanar’s own assertions of an existing script (whoops!). As judges before him, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner clearly enjoys his role, managing to work in “live long and prosper” in the ruling language.
Eriq Garner in The Hollywood Reporter goes into greater depth. I need to re-read the full opinion, but there’s some interesting indicators of where this case is going to go.
One of the big things I noted was how the judge pointed out that it’s not that CBS/Paramount are saying they own pointy ears or gold uniform shirts or spaceships, but that all of these together can constitute a reasonable understanding that intellectual property (IP) is being infringed.
So for instance, if we were to film a scene with tiny, furry-footed people talking to tall people with pointy ears and the the tall people with pointy ears were talking in a language that is clearly a form of Elvish that J.R.R. Tolkien invented, then the Tolkien estate may reasonably infer we are infringing on their copyrights.
Speaking of language, it looks like the Klingon language has been deemed not part of this case, so no ruling will be made on who owns the language, so the Klingon Language Institute and productions of Shakespeare in the original Klingon can continue for now.
On the other hand, the judge did note that raising a lot of money based on someone else’s IP is something The Court can weigh on, so the eventual ruling will, almost certainly, impact Star Trek fan films and other fan productions.
The Axanar legal team will be responding to this ruling in about two weeks, so you can expect another post by then (if not before).
The trial date itself is now going to be January 31st, 2017, so between that and taking in the new Star Trek TV series, I think I’m basically committed to writing about this for 9 more months at least.
I hope this doesn’t turn into a five-year mission.
Update (2016-05-11, later in the PM):
After reading more of Monday’s ruling, I am puzzled by Axanar Productions’ decision not to move forward with production of the film.
On the one hand, I can understand why they won’t from a legal perspective. Part of their defense is essentially, “We haven’t violated any copyrights yet.” Therefore, if they have the movie in hand, they would clearly be violating at least some of what CBS/Paramount says they’re violating. The fact that countless other fan productions are in the same boat may not matter because other said production companies or individuals are not named in the lawsuit.
However, that goes to my main point of confusion: Axanar was never going to win this lawsuit. There’s no question of whether they’re violating copyright, there’s simply a question of CBS/Paramount being inconsistent in enforcement. I know that matters for trademarks and service marks (e.g., a “generic trademark“), but I have no idea how that applies for copyright. I seriously doubt Axanar’s legal team can find CBS/Paramount’s legal team has flubbed any procedural tasks and would think that would not be enough to throw the case out (i.e., “You forgot to use an Oxford comma in the filing: DENIED” will not happen).
So that means the best Axanar can hope for is a favorable settlement, based on the whole David vs. Goliath PR aspect of it all… buoyed by the support of a friendly fan community.
Well, as I discovered the other week, the fan and fan production community is not entirely friendly, and they may have just cause to perceive Axanar has not been acting in good faith.
This is troubling, gentle reader. Right now, I’m thinking it’s more of a Star Trek: The Next Generation ‘mindwarp’ episode and not the growing realization I’m watching Star Trek V unfold, but it looks like I need to go down the rabbit hole to do some research.
I suppose I should ask the for the Prophets to guide me or at least hope they look out for Bjorns as they do Bajorans.
Update (2016-05-18):
Janet Gershen-Siegel has an entertaining and exhaustive article that goes over a lot of the legal specifics of the case. Much of this connects to what my concerns have been earlier about Axanar needing to settle because it doesn’t have a strong case. But thankfully, it also goes over issues with the Klingon language and how it’s off the table.
Oh, thanks for the cite!