I think the best lens for this discussion of copyright and enduring cultural institutions is probably Sherlock Holmes. It's got it all! You want to compare derivative "original" works versus direct adaptations? You can look at "House" versus "Sherlock" or "Elementary." You want to talk about the kind of absurd situations lengthy copyright terms invite? The Conan Doyle Estate is infamous for going after every new Sherlock Holmes story that isn't licensed by them for ostensibly using elements from the later Doyle stories (which happen to be still under copyright in some juristictions) that aren't present in the earlier ones (that have entered the public domain). You write an adaptation of "A Study in Scarlett" as a comic opera or something, and there's a line where Holmes expresses any sort of fondness for Watson, and out they come, arguing that the character of Sherlock Holmes never expressed the slightest emotion or human affection until story "x" which is still under copyright, money please. (Holmes fans take issue with that reading of the early stories, but the point isn't the literary merit of the estate's character analysis, the point is to have a superficial excuse to begin legal proceedings in the hopes of forcing a settlement or prevailing in court.) That's exactly what would (or, God willing, will) happen as Star Trek starts to slip into the public domain, whether by time or by charity, as the OP dreams. Someone makes a story with Klingons, CBS/Paramount/Omnizon or whoever owns the copyright on the remainder of Star Trek in a few decades says, "Ah, ah, ah! Your Klingon character has an opportunity to betray the hero but doesn't act on it, and the Klingon people having a concept of 'honor' wasn't established until Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, released 1984, still under copyright, money please."
Yes, it is. Which is why I ask the question of what fans are owed by a franchise? Because, from my point of view they are not owed anything except an entertaining show. As one friend of mine in the VFX industry stated regarding Star Wars but I apply it to all companies; "George Lucas can do whatever he wants and he doesn't owe me a damn thing." Yup.
My understanding was that Trek Continues reduced the number of episodes by two after the Fan Film Guidelines came out. I can't say what there motivations where, though. Actually, I suspect CBS has much more clear ownership of the copyrights. A company that large could potentially be sued for millions of dollars and face injunction on streaming services otherwise. However, your fundamental point stands: Copyright law is a trainwreck.
Then people should be mad at copyright law and not treat CBS like the most evil company in the world for using its property to make its profits.
Without commenting on how "evil" CBS is, it's totally fair to criticize copyright law and specific copyright owners at the same time. Just because someone don't like the outcome of Eldritch v. Ashcroft doesn't mean they have to be in love with Warner and Chappell for their invalidated copyright of the Happy Birthday Song, for example. You can argue that both have done harm to the general public in their own ways.
I think we might be talking past each other a little. As far as I understand it, "Star Trek" does not exist as one singular monolithic fifty-five year piece of creative content as far as copyright is concerned, but as a number of individual episodes/movies/books/etc. So, as a work-for-hire (since the copyright is owned by a succession of corporations, not a human person), under current law every quanta of Star Trek content would be individually under copyright for 95 years. So, January 1, 2061, "The Man Trap" through "Shore Leave" would enter the public domain, and anyone anywhere could use those stories or any elements within them in a new work without license from whoever owns the copyright in forty years, but only those episodes, so Romulans are okay to use, but Klingons are still exclusive to the incumbent copyright owner. You can have Captain Pike, but not draw upon his blatant workplace gender discrimination and corresponding insulting remark towards Number One, since those were exclusive to "The Cage" (published 1988, entering public domain 2083). Your pool of Star Trek lore will expand January 1, 2062, when "The Galileo Seven" through "The Trouble With Tribbles" enter the public domain, so you'll be able to make something with Klingons, including fan-favorite characters Kor and Koloth, but not Kang, and you can mention their imperialism, brutality, and use of spies (though I'm sure the copyright-owner would ding you if you said they were surgically altered to appear human and not just in disguise, since that was only explicitly established in "Trials and Tribble-ations," ©1996, public domain 2091), but not the historical figure of Kahless... at least not for another two years, when the last of the original series enters the public domain. And so on, in that fashion, year by year. That's what I mean by "slipping into the public domain." But, like I said, that's current law. I would not be surprised if, a hundred years from now, there's not a living human who has ever known a world without Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy, but the Weyland-Yutani Omnicorp that is the sole owner and provider of all published creative content for planet Earth still decides who can make valid stories about them that are entitled to remuneration and who instead would be punitively sued for doing so.
My guess is that to film more episodes than they'd already gotten budget for they would have had to do additional fundraising, and they probably just didn't want to open that and other cans of worms with CBS/Paramount and the new guideline restrictions.
I would just like to hear the specific harm because if harm is done then could it not be argued in court for that harm? I'm all for changing copyright law but I keep hearing that harm is done yet fail to grasp how harm is being done. As others have argued, if you want to make a space adventure show then you can go do exactly that. In fact, I would encourage that because that requires utilizing creativity and developing an idea. I think it would encourage greater expansion of the genre as a whole, as well as people being able to still share their passion. And, by creating their own thing they can make money on it. Unless I am missing a specific definition of harm then I am failing to see harm done by CBS having their own rules regarding their property under current law. I would push for lobbying to change the law but not because of harm done.
@David cgc, There are a couple of things you may not be considering. First is that the names and likenesses of characters and ships may be trademarked (or perhaps under design patents, but I'm not well versed on that). What's more is that aspects of the characters, including retroactive continuity, that are part of works that haven't entered the public domain are still under copyright. So you can't necessarily use those characters even after the copyright goes into public domain, and if you do, you have to be careful not to use elements and characterization from works that haven't entered public domain yet. That said, a simple solution might be to rename and redesign the characters. As I recall, they had enough money for all the planned episodes, but perhaps I was mistaken. In the two examples cited, both were argued in court. The SCOTUS decision in Eldred v. Ashcroft basically did an end run around the "limited time" clause, allowing copyright to be retroactively extended repeatedly, so long as the extension was finite, despite the fact that the extension had happened numerous times and at the right times to prevent content from falling into public domain. It also served as precedent for later decisions that established that content could actually be taken OUT of public domain and put BACK into copyright. This effectively makes it impossible to know WHEN or IF a copyrighted work will enter the public domain. If you don't see the false Happy Birthday Song copyright, I could say the harm can be literally measured in dollars, but that would ignore the chilling effect that the false copyright had on businesses, movie and TV productions, et cetera, that refrained from using the song. At this point, the song is literally part of our cultural heritage. You're just harping on my specific choice of words, as if I were making a legal rather than a rhetorical argument. The simple fact is that both of my cited instances were to the detriment of the public at large, and had they not been (by definition or otherwise), that would have simply made them poor examples rather than undermining my original argument.
Trademarks are brands and brand names ™ and registered trademarks are "visual marks" ® of same or symbols like the starfleet arrowhead or the various Star Trek logos Patents are limited duration protection for designs which will be made as commercial products, i.e. die cast metal starships, the overall design of which may be copyrighted
As Maurice says, trademarks are only proper nouns, logos, and things of that sort. So maybe you couldn't call it "Star Trek" (that's actually a really interesting question; plenty of people put out editions of old public-domain novels and things like that. If the title is still trademarked because the franchise a going concern, does that mean, say, a person couldn't publish a public domain edition of the original novelization of Star Wars in 2072 under the title "Star Wars" because Disney would still be maintaining the trademark on that two-word phrase as a title for narrative fiction?), and while the crew could fly around on a starship named "U.S.S. Enterprise," you'd want to be careful to avoid referring to it as the "starship Enterprise" ("Enterprise" being too generic a term to trademark, but "starship Enterprise" being specific enough to protect legally). Luckily, patents haven't gotten the same level of corporate attention as copyright, so they still age out after a maximum of 20 years (and its a good thing, too, with all the patent trolls who make a business out of buying obscure patents from their owners, then pursuing legal action against anyone who could conceivably be seen as infringing on them). That's exactly what I've been talking about.
We really should be happy that CBS allowed the fan films to go on as they did, a lot of other companies would have put a stop to them as soon as they started. And I'm pretty sure CBS was aware of them all along, but chose to turn play dumb until the Axanar team forced their hand by taking things to far.
Good point. Any design patents will have long expired by then, as they only last 14 years. Actually, that probably means some of the nicest Trek designs may already be out of design patent protection...
I just wish a license for trek wasn't so much money. A limited license for somebody to produce say 20 of a trek item that doesn't cost half a million dollars would be nice. Maybe 15% of whatever profit? Just a thought
The issue is that it's not enough money to make it worth the rights-holder's time. Just the lawyer time to sign the contract—let alone draft one—would cost them more than they'd ever make from such a run. This is the business reality.
Planets popping up next to earth, etc, is pretty much the kind of nonsense Nu-Whovians go nuts for. So yeah, maybe old Flash Gordon could work. Dynamite Comics did a Flash Gordon series about 5 or 6 years ago where the artwork was dont in the style of the old King Syndicate stuff. It looks good, but obviously its not something that is mainstream-able. Dynamite isn't exactly on the checkout aisle at supermarkets.