On Wednesday, a federal judge was told that while Paramount Pictures and CBS have produced a “limited number” of Star Trek television episodes and films, “they do not not own a copyright to the idea of Star Trek, or the Star Trekuniverse as a whole.”
The proposition comes from Alec Peters’ Axanar Productions, which put out on YouTube a 20-minute “mockumentary” titled Prelude to Axanar and was in the midst of pursuing a feature-length version touted as a professional-quality Star Trek fan film before being hit with a copyright lawsuit. The litigation survived an initial motion to dismiss, and despite some hopes expressed by Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin that all this would go away, Paramount and CBS are marching forward in their lawsuit.
Also of interest: Peters attempted to meet with Netflix to produce a Star Trek show.
One of the challenges of copyright is that it applies to works that are, for many people, part of their formative experiences.
Not that the alternative is better, but we could probably stop Disney expanding the copyright laws for so long if we made it have a shorter period which was renewed by creating derivative works. (Star Trek (as a franchise) would still be copyrighted because they keep making it.)