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Likewise
Scott Schneider and John Eaves recently said on Facebook that the Discoveryprise had to look 25% different to the TOS version for legal reasons, not just for aesthetic ones. Lots of people are speculating on Eaves' Facebook page as to why (and who actually has the rights to the original if neither CBS or Paramount can use it)
Months ago, one of the writers said they can't use stuff from any Trek movies due to the CBS/Paramount split. It was thought debunked, but now the VFX people are saying this.
I'm eagerly awaiting the next wave of Star Trek novels, which can only reference select episodes of Voyager and season two of TOS, and have covers featuring Best of Trek-style Enterprises
Months ago, one of the writers said they can't use stuff from any Trek movies due to the CBS/Paramount split. It was thought debunked, but now the VFX people are saying this.
I'm eagerly awaiting the next wave of Star Trek novels, which can only reference select episodes of Voyager and season two of TOS, and have covers featuring Best of Trek-style Enterprises
How do you work out the percentage value of a spaceship???
No I mean, how do you work out 25% of a 3d model? What percentage change is making the nacelles blue for example?
Is this what's holding up the license negotiations then? CBS only wants to give Pocket rights to 25% of the franchise and everyone's trying to hammer out exactly what they want and what they'll forgo?
No lie, that is a pretty boss designI'm eagerly awaiting the next wave of Star Trek novels, which can only reference select episodes of Voyager and season two of TOS, and have covers featuring Best of Trek-style Enterprises
Just imagine being one of the lawyers trying to figure that out. "I spent five years in law school just to spend my working days pouring over schematics of a fictional spaceship and determine if it's sufficiently different from the fifty year old design it originated from."
Uhh, no, the comment was about the Enterprise design in Discovery, a show produced by CBS themselves. That has nothing to do with Pocket.
I know. I was making a little joke.
Extremely little, Ensign.
Yeah, but don't forget, all the past shows were when Star Trek was owned by Paramount alone. There was no split until after Enterprise was over.
What's curious still, though, is CBS owns all the prior TV shows, including the original series, so not sure why there's a legal issue with using the original series design of the Enterprise. But then I don't understand a lot of legal stuff like this.
Life was much easier when it was just Paramount, one owner, one licensee. If the Abramsverse Star Trek movies were just Paramount and Star Trek was still just a Paramount property then there probably would be no issues with novels including those elements. But now we have CBS owning the rights, Paramount having movie rights and then add Bad Robot to the mix. I guess that's why the lawyers get paid the big bucks, to keep it all straight.
I remember once a friend of mine was joking about the 25% difference to be "safe" for copyright reasons, and designed a computer program that would randomly alter 25% of the pixels in an image, so if he used it in another work, he'd be guaranteed to be legally safe. Once he was finished, he realized he'd spent weeks learning to program so he could make the "Add Noise" filter from Photoshop.
But it is a known meme, though a quick Google only turned up one result, which says it's an urban legend.
I think the key takeaway is that the DSC version of the Enterprise needed/was desired to be legally distinct from the TOS version, however you want to quantify that. My guess is it was for merchandising purposes, so models and posters and such of the Discoprise can be produced by people making DSC tie-ins without the licensees having to own both a DSC and TOS license.
Not necessarily. Pocket's license has usually included every part of the franchise, but other licensors have only had rights to specific parts of it. For instance, Malibu got the DS9 comics rights while DC had TOS and TNG, TokyoPop only had TOS and TNG rights, and IDW has mostly only had TOS, TNG, and Kelvin, plus DS9 for a little while.
With the proviso that the company that used to be called "Paramount" is now called "CBS." So it's the same company holding the rights overall, but the movie studio part has been split off into a separate company.
That seems plausible.
I guess it's just what they feel is safely distinct enough that they won't get sued. Usually I find one unmissable difference they can point to and say "it's not the TOS Enterprise, look the nacelle pylons are bifurcated!" (Or as Seth McFarlane might say, "It's not Star Trek, our guys don't have transporters!")
I guess it's sort of like how DC couldn't get the likeness rights to Roger C. Carmel for the Harry Mudd issues of the Trek comic, so they gave him a new design that was of the same physical type as Carmel but different enough to satisfy the legal department. So you could just pretend it was the same even though it wasn't strictly the same.
As I understand it, OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL deployed teams of lawyers to make sure the Oz in the movie was sufficiently different from the classic MGM version, while still being recognizable to general audiences, with even the exact shade of green used for the Wicked Witch's skin coming under scrutiny.
Reminds me of the time that I found myself immersed in a serious, in-depth discussion, involving various grown-up publishing professionals, regarding the burning issue of precisely how much bare butt could be exposed on the cover of a CONAN novel. "I went to college for this . . . ?"
Or I wonder if there was some clause in Matt Jeffries contract in the 60’s (kind of like the designer of the 60’s Batmobile) where Jeffries technically owned the design but Paramount could use it for the show, but when the split occurred, CBS didn’t renegotiate to continue their unlimited use.
Wait, I'm confused. Why is this suddenly an issue now when the CBS/Paramount split was years ago? We've gotten quite a few books in that time that used stuff from both the movies and shows, with the first examples that come to mind being Serpents in the Garden, which was a TMP-era sequel to A Private Little War, and Foul Deeds Will Rise, which was a sequel to The Conscience of the King set between The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country. I think all or most of the Vanguard books also came after the split, and that used a ton of stuff from both the shows and movies.Scott Schneider and John Eaves recently said on Facebook that the Discoveryprise had to look 25% different to the TOS version for legal reasons, not just for aesthetic ones. Lots of people are speculating on Eaves' Facebook page as to why (and who actually has the rights to the original if neither CBS or Paramount can use it)
Months ago, one of the writers said they can't use stuff from any Trek movies due to the CBS/Paramount split. It was thought debunked, but now the VFX people are saying this.
I'm eagerly awaiting the next wave of Star Trek novels, which can only reference select episodes of Voyager and season two of TOS, and have covers featuring Best of Trek-style Enterprises
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