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CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar

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jespah said:
Correct, so far as I can tell. Damages may come down to how many infringements are counted. Is the Vulcan scene just one, or is it divided into several, based upon its elements? Here is what I see, if a stricter approach is taken:
  1. Soval the character
  2. Vulcans as a species
  3. The planet Vulcan
  4. The background scenery for Vulcan
  5. The Vulcan robes (maybe)
  6. The human Starfleet uniform (might not be in this scene; this might be in Prelude only)
  7. The mention of the Klingons (IIRC)
  8. The mention of the Federation (IIRC)
  9. The use of the word Axanar
  10. The use of the Vulcan ring-style ships
At $150,000 apiece, this would equal $1.5M, thereby wiping out more than the KS and IGG money combined, and I haven't even counted patches, coffee, DVDs, models, etc.

Then, yeah, actual damages. That'll be interesting.
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The complaint lists ten general points in which it believes IP rights were violated. Some of those points have specific sub-points. For example, it mentions the use of copyrighted species from "Star Trek", then lists the Vulcans, Klingons, and Andorians. So that's three infringements. It mentions characters in another point, specifically mentioning, Soval, Sarek, Captain Robert April, and Richard Robau. Along with Garth, there are five more infringements, right there. The use of the Federation is mentioned. The use of Federation-style starships, bridges, and planets. Props and logos, such as weapons and insignia on uniforms. The costumes. The Vulcan scene receives a specific mention, calling out the entire look and feel of it, including costumes, the pointy ears, and the hairstyle. It's also intended to be a prequel to events in "Star Trek" (so derivative).

Anyway, however it's parsed after the 10 general points, it's at least 10 x $150,000 = $1.5 million. If the subpoints are included as individual violations, it's 15 or more violations. That's at least $2.25 million, folks. If they want to distinguish between Starfleet starships and Klingon starships, it's parsed even more. At any rate, I'd say it's at least $1.5 million and if it reached nearly $4 million, I wouldn't bat an eye. This doesn't even take into account non-movie-related violations.
 
Franklin said:
So, he could be heading for martyrdom (figuratively, of course) among his fans. If that happens, I'd guess most of them will say he was a victim of ruthless corporate America stepping on "the little guy" who only wanted to follow a dream and make people happy. After all, they'd say, he wasn't hurting anybody except CBS, who was just embarrassed that he was handling "Star Trek" better than they were.
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Just in case, I will start my new manuscript for The Awesome Alec Peters: Misunderstood Mastermind
 
BigJake said:
The really funny thing is, it probably isn't. ;)
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a quick browse of the keywords shows various lawsuits over comic book infringements, and a lawsuit by dc about the bat as a logo having a similarity to a logo by a spanish sports team. not to mention any plastic surgery mishaps which might be on file.
 
Lynsioux said:
Just in case, I will start my new manuscript for The Awesome Alec Peters: Misunderstood Mastermind
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good luck. that Vulcan scene, once you remove visual and script ideas which have come before in trek (including the conceit of humans being unusual and unique, going all the way back to the TOS first pilot), well, after that, what is left is

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but you knew that
 
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Basically this all REALLY boils down to is Paramount/CBS recognizing Axanar/Ares shooting this film specifically as a way to make a profit right? All the grousing about IP use (ship design, characters, races) is really amusing after the Horizon trailer was posted with people saying how great it looks. If you're going to gripe about design similarities between ships and not say a word about the EXACT model used in Horizon, that, to me, is kind of funny in itself.
 
Admiral Cain said:
Because conceivably every dollar that went to Axanar is from a Star Trek fan who would have otherwise spent money with CBS/Paramount?
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Here's how the law addresses how actual damages are calculated:

Actual Damages and Profits.— The copyright owner is entitled to recover the actual damages suffered by him or her as a result of the infringement, and any profits of the infringer that are attributable to the infringement and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages. In establishing the infringer’s profits, the copyright owner is required to present proof only of the infringer’s gross revenue, and the infringer is required to prove his or her deductible expenses and the elements of profit attributable to factors other than the copyrighted work.
 
uminoken said:
Basically this all REALLY boils down to is Paramount/CBS recognizing Axanar/Ares shooting this film specifically as a way to make a profit right? All the grousing about IP use (ship design, characters, races) is really amusing after the Horizon trailer was posted with people saying how great it looks. If you're going to gripe about design similarities between ships and not say a word about the EXACT model used in Horizon, that, to me, is kind of funny in itself.
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Alec Peters said this was an independent, professional production, and that he is defying CBS/Paramount's right to shut him down. The reason we mention the ships, the characters, races, and so on, is because it's obvious bullshit on Peters' part that this effort is anything other than building profit (and a studio) off of an already established IP.

Did you see the part where Horizon raised $1.2 million and badmouthed CBS, claiming that their production was real Star Trek, and independent of the license that CBS holds, while profiting off of that very IP?

No? Oh, well maybe there's a lesson there. I wonder what it is?
 
uminoken said:
Basically this all REALLY boils down to is Paramount/CBS recognizing Axanar/Ares shooting this film specifically as a way to make a profit right? All the grousing about IP use (ship design, characters, races) is really amusing after the Horizon trailer was posted with people saying how great it looks. If you're going to gripe about design similarities between ships and not say a word about the EXACT model used in Horizon, that, to me, is kind of funny in itself.
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Not 'profit' per say - financial gain. What's the difference?

- 38K a year salary = financial gain for Mr. Peters

- Undisclosed deferred salary for his girlfriend = financial gain

- Using Backer funds gained by declaring he's doing the Star Trek: Axanar Project (they removed 'Star Trek' from the name AFTER the KS campaign) to build a studio space that Mr. Peters and others have admitted in video blogs that they planed to use for 'for profit' productions = material gain for Mr. Peters.

- A 'donor store' that allows backers to acquire 'retroactive' packages for 'Prelude to Axanar' <-- A project that was completed and should not require further backer funding.

and I could go on. Again, Mr. Peters defense of 'the film itself will make no profit and thus complies with CBS unwritten rules for fan films' is misdirection as what CBS said is no one (aside from SAG/Hollywood Union talent as that's a known requirement to use these people in independent/school/fan productions) can have ANY sort of financial gain. Also - for all Mr. Peter's claims that the film is non-profit; his company IS listed and filed as a 'for profit' company, and he's been claiming for nearly 6 months that a filing for 501c non-profit status is 'in the works'; but it's never materialized; and the company wasn't listed as non-profit at the time the lawsuit was filed.

TLDR: Whether the final film would have made a profit or not isn't the issue. That Mr. Peters and other members of his production team HAVE ALREADY seen financial and material gain (his 38K a year salary and the deferred salary of his girlfriend) is.
 
uminoken said:
Basically this all REALLY boils down to is Paramount/CBS recognizing Axanar/Ares shooting this film specifically as a way to make a profit right? All the grousing about IP use (ship design, characters, races) is really amusing after the Horizon trailer was posted with people saying how great it looks. If you're going to gripe about design similarities between ships and not say a word about the EXACT model used in Horizon, that, to me, is kind of funny in itself.
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well yes the studio lawsuit calls out the financial gains along with the use of IP, and yes, they have allowed the IP use by pure "make no money" films (not "make no profit after all the money is invested in assets to make future profit"). this is given.

but there's something else going on, too -- the claim that this work is so much better than all fan films and all things the studio is doing. what's *really* amusing is nothing original is there so far, once you take out the Trek IP. What's been produced so far may be HD beauty shots of Trek IP, but you can't point to practically anything that's an original idea, its copying, copying, copying. the process of doing this picking apart IP item by IP item you can call "grousing", but its a search for Spock, with not a lot of hope. or so I see it.
 
So I don't really plug anything while I'm here ... but since I am here, we just did a story on "Star Trek: Horizon," and it prompted me to write a commentary about a conversation I had with Robert Meyer Burnett a couple days ago.

It made me wonder, with apologies to "Star Trek V" (although it should be apologizing to me), "What does a fan film need with $2 million?"

I answer the question!! Woohoo!

http://1701news.com/node/1013/what-does-fan-film-need-2-million.html
 
muCephi said:
but there's something else going on, too -- the claim that this work is so much better than all fan films and all things the studio is doing. what's *really* amusing is nothing original is there so far, once you take out the Trek IP. What's been produced so far may be HD beauty shots of Trek IP, but you can't point to practically anything that's an original idea, its copying, copying, copying. the process of doing this picking apart IP item by IP item you can call "grousing", but its a search for Spock, with not a lot of hope. or so I see it.
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I think there's some original ideas in Prelude - setting up the war, the back and forth of the fighting, a new ship to turn the tide, the hint of battle strategies to come... I'm not sure how much came from the FASA books, but I think there's some great story potential there.

Don't get me wrong, Paramount/CBS are ABSOLUTELY in the right and Alec should have backed down a long time ago and really not been, well, himself, to people online. I don't however think this was a huge scheme to con people by using something they love, I do think the initial idea was born out of a creative impulse to make a good Star Trek film. Instead of writing/shooting within a fixed budget, they became more enamored of all the funding they got, all of the cool merchandise they could spawn, and began to focus more on the financial gain of themselves/the studio than the production itself.
 
uminoken said:
I think there's some original ideas in Prelude - setting up the war, the back and forth of the fighting, a new ship to turn the tide, the hint of battle strategies to come... I'm not sure how much came from the FASA books, but I think there's some great story potential there.
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Seriously? None of what you list is 'original' per se.

DS9 Season 3 "The Search": Sisko states the Defiant was a prototype of a new Class ship built specifically to fight the Borg.
^^^
That pretty much is the basis of the Axanar plot point of the Ares being specifically designed to fight the Klingon ships.

As for 'setting up a war' - see DS9 Seasons 3 - 5.

As for the 'back and forth' in a war - see DS9 Seasons 6 and 7.

So, yeah, tell me again what makes Axanar's story plot points so original and not done in Star Trek previously again? ;)
 
You can pretty much point to just about ANY war in history and find the same items. I'm not arguing that they are the only ones to think of these things, I'm just saying don't be a Peters and throw everything about the production under the bus because the bus driver is unhinged.
 
Michael Hinman said:
So I don't really plug anything while I'm here ... but since I am here, we just did a story on "Star Trek: Horizon," and it prompted me to write a commentary about a conversation I had with Robert Meyer Burnett a couple days ago.

It made me wonder, with apologies to "Star Trek V" (although it should be apologizing to me), "What does a fan film need with $2 million?"

I answer the question!! Woohoo!

http://1701news.com/node/1013/what-does-fan-film-need-2-million.html
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Good article Michael.

That's been my thoughts for the last few days. Also, have you noticed how many views the horizon trailer has?

Over 3 million!!!

Way more than Axanar.

This movie looks like it was made for less than Alec Peters wages last year... :D

#youdothemath
 
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uminoken said:
I think there's some original ideas in Prelude - setting up the war, the back and forth of the fighting, a new ship to turn the tide, the hint of battle strategies to come... I'm not sure how much came from the FASA books, but I think there's some great story potential there.
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personally I think that a "new idea", to be generous, would postulate some way of thinking that is outside of normal human experience, at the least. The TOS characters may not have been deep, and may have been caricatures of issues eg Loki "dont you see he's white on the other side", but at least there was an effort to postulate something new. designing another same as all the rest war, of itself, just isn't new in my view; I just don't buy the war story thesis as being anything new or of itself, Trek. sure, there COULD be story potential in it, but the basic problem has been for a very long time that potential has not been revealed. Alec *claims* its great that and people who have seen it think its great, but there's nothing out there to show this. So far, there's just zzzzz copying of Trek IP.

uminoken said:
Don't get me wrong, Paramount/CBS are ABSOLUTELY in the right and Alec should have backed down a long time ago and really not been, well, himself, to people online.
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acknowledged. Its hard for me to do things like read that podcast transcribed a few pages ago and not infer that Alec *is* being himelf if he casually talks about the "little heads" of fans and doesn't even stop to correct himself.

uminoken said:
I don't however think this was a huge scheme to con people by using something they love, I do think the initial idea was born out of a creative impulse to make a good Star Trek film. Instead of writing/shooting within a fixed budget, they became more enamored of all the funding they got, all of the cool merchandise they could spawn, and began to focus more on the financial gain of themselves/the studio than the production itself.
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I personally want to believe that lots and lots of people associated with the production have had great motives. And I do agree it is possible that at the start it may have been the impulse to create a Trek film that put pen to paper. But as things have been created in certain ways rather than others, seemingly at the choice of the project leaders and no other reason, it has become much harder for me to see just good faith in all this.

For example, all the weasel talk about "not making a profit" when they know that the CBS/Paramount studio's intent clearly was NOT "not making a profit after we keep hundreds of thousands of dollars for ourselves in the form of salaries and infrastructure investments in a studio". A plan which began execution long ago, and remains defended even to this day with claims that they are somehow going to have some sort of formal legal nonprofit status, but NEVER share the basic plans which their applications require them to submit to the IRS, and take over a half year to work on the application and NEVER file it while the money keeps coming in and getting spent and acquiring assets owned by Axanar, which is Alec.. while not actually doing the film.. And then routinely, always, CENSORING and BANNING every single person who tries to raise any issue in the venue where the donors can read it..

This nonprofit thing really tips it for me. ymmv. but I don't see any way that such a point of view could have simply spontaneously evolved and entrapped anyone. And if it did, the fact that its not acknowledged and backed away from, but rather, doubled down upon with attorneys, is ferengi city to me.
 
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jespah said:
That the Court enjoin Defendants, their agents, servants, employees, attorneys, successors, assigns, subsidiaries, and all persons, firms, and corporations acting in concert with them, from directly or indirectly infringing the copyrights in the Star Trek Copyrighted Works, including but not limited to continuing to distribute, copy, publicly perform, market, advertise, promote, produce, sell, or offer for sale the Axanar Works or any works derived or copied from the Star Trek Copyrighted Works, and from participating or assisting in any such activity whether or not it occurs in the United States.
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So a random thought occurred to me as I was rereading this language...could this conceivably be interpreted as barring not just Axanar Productions from continuing, but Alec personally (and any Does if they are ever named) from participating or assisting on ANY Star Trek fan production that uses the Star Trek Copyrighted Works in the world? If Alec is indeed the sole owner and shareholder of AP of which Aries Studios is currently a part, could that order conceivably bar Aries Studios from ever being rented out to or used for other ST fan productions as originally planned? Further could it bar Alec (and any named Does) individually from even working with any other ST fan productions in any capacity? If the language can be interpreted that broadly, then theoretically even if Alec separately incorporates Aries Studios, neither he nor any named Does could be associated with it if it intends to do business with any fan production that uses the Star Trek Copyrighted Works.

Is that a ridiculously broad misinterpretation of that language or could it put Alec out of the Star Trek fan film biz altogether if he loses?
 
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