When I say original, I mean to say one can take characters that have already been created but don't beat the same story to death. And don't take someone else's script. You may accidently find that they may have an Estate that covers the author's work or the WGA after you. Either way you are looking at possibility of:
"the network and two co-defendants must pay Writer Harlan Ellison $285,000 for plagiarism of a script"
"JK Rowling and her publisher are being sued for £500million for allegedly copying Harry Potter from an earlier children's book, also by an English writer."
This writer has died and it is his estate that is suing.
I hope you have crossed all your "T"s and dotted your "I"s
Absolutely! That's why it has been such an odd lot of episodes on our plate: we can only do those old scripts that we can get permission to legally do. That's also one reason why we can only get these episodes out the door once a year. The legal preproduction work adds some time to the process. For example, it's no secret that it was that very issue which ended up being a problem with our plans to do "Kilkenny Cats." Revisiting the Kzinti in the
Trek universe was an exciting idea--until we found out that Larry Niven already gave the television/motion picture/(and presumably Internet) rights to someone else years ago. Tracking down that individual (who it turns out is unwilling to permit use of the characters) was a bit of a chore--and ultimately disappointing to us. So to prevent that kind of problem in the future, we secured the services of an intellectual property firm and learned to do all our homework.
Another example: George Clayton Johnson wrote "Rock-A-Bye Baby--Or Die!" way back during
TOS. When Gene Coon didn't want to produce it, Johnson actually bought his script back from
Trek. So he owns it outright--which is one reason why we're considering doing it. Johnson has been involved in updating the script for our
Phase II series.
Another example: the estate of the late Shirley S. Maiewski actually approached
us to produce her fanfiction story for "Mind Sifter." So we've been talking with the estate and things are looking good. More on that if and when it develops.
As I've said before: we get to play in Paramount/CBS's Trek sandbox purely because of their goodwill. They could shut all of us down tomorrow if they were so inclined. We know there's a line somewhere that we shouldn't cross; not knowing exactly where that line is, we always try to as far away from where we think that line might be--not dance as close to it as we can. So we always make sure we are not breaking contracts, make sure we stay in compliance with SAG and OSHA rules, keep the WGA happy, fill out permits when we do location shoots, and so on. Even fan productions are not for the faint of heart--and the greater the visibility and success of a production, the greater the target it becomes.
Of course, the fact that we make not a dime on any of our productions is a level of protection as well. If someone feels they have been wronged and seeks to recover what he or she feels is that person's legitimate portion of the money we make from our series, that party will probably find that even if they collect 100% of what we bring in, 100% of $0.00 is probably not worth the trouble of a lawsuit. Also, with, I believe, a three year legal sttatue of limitations, there is a small window for folks to raise legal objections. Our use of (arguably) Harlan Ellison's "Guardian of Forever" in "In Harm's Way" not only netted us $0.00, it has now also been longer than three years since it's release. (All this certainly doesn't consitute the sole basis of our legal strategy, however. But they are factors that shouldn't be discounted.)
All in all, it's a bit of a comfort to me to know that all your concerns you've been expressing are all things we do indeed already take into account and thoroughly address in our productions.
Nice shot Dennis.
