Indeed, these characters are so minor and esoteric that Justin Lin and J.J. Abrams—Star Trek fans who are intimately familiar with the Star Trek universe—have admitted that they are unfamiliar with them or otherwise consider them unimportant.
"Your Honor, the Supreme Court has clearly stated that a copyright cannot be enforced unless the subject matter is known to the man who directed
Cloverfield. I mean, this is black-letter law."
Some more fun statements from the Mirror Copyright Universe:
And while Defendants barely feature Soval in Defendants’ Works, the only concrete references to a character named Soval in the entire Star Trek oeuvre is a 2001 pilot episode of the television series Enterprise, and a couple of other brief appearances.
Soval appeared in 12 episodes of
Enterprise. There are plenty of television series that only make 12-13 episodes total. By Axanar's reasoning, I suppose none of the characters in
Firefly are protected by copyright.
Gene Roddenberry encouraged the creation of fan fiction, and was honored that fans were so passionate about Star Trek that they were inspired to create their own fan works to celebrate it.
Gene Roddenberry is not the "author" of
Star Trek. He co-wrote the original pilot script and was given a "Created By" credit in accordance with the Writers Guild of America basic agreement. Even if he were alive today, he would have no legal standing in this case. Furthermore, Roddenberry supported "fan fiction" in the context of written stories, not full-length motion pictures.
Plaintiff CBS is profiting from commercial tours offered by a studio used to make fan films that replicates exactly the Original Series sets.
This is in a footnote, apparently to something redacted in the main body. But this footnote suggests to me that one reason LFIM won't settle is he's furious about the
Star Trek Continues deal with CBS.
Defendants went to great lengths to make sure their works fell within the tolerated realm of fan fiction as Defendants understood it at the time. While Defendants communicated an intent to raise the bar with respect to the quality of fan films, there is ample evidence, and dozens of communications, that demonstrate that Defendants expressly still considered Defendants’ Works to be fan films.
This is really the crux of the argument: A fan film is anything that calls itself a fan film. The legal significance of this escapes me, since federal copyright law does not include an exception for fan films.
Beyond attempting to twist Defendants celebrating their passion for Star Trek—by making non-commercial fan films that have caused Plaintiffs no harm—into some nefarious plot, Plaintiffs’ Motion is also filled with irrelevant inaccuracies intended to confuse the issues.
As opposed to the highly relevant views of a man who has been dead for 25 years and the director of
Cloverfield.
Priceless!
Alec can go fuck himself.
