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The Star Trek Axanar Lawsuit is Still Pending


Last month, Star Trek Beyond executive producer J.J. Abrams suggested that the legal proceedings between Paramount Pictures, CBS and Axanar Productions — the company behind the crowd-funded fan films Star Trek: Axanar and Prelude to Axanar — would come to an end. At that time, Abrams said:

"We started talking about and realized it was not an appropriate way to be dealing with the fans. Fans of Star Trek are part of this world. So we went to the studio and pushed them to stop this lawsuit. Withing the next few weeks, it will be announced that this is going away."

Shortly after that, Buzzfeed's Adam B. Vary received a statement the studios, who co-own Star Trek, saying the companies involved were engaged in "settlement discussions."

But according to The Hollywood Reporter, lawyers engaged on the studios' behalf have continued to press the issue in court. On May 23, Axanar Productions responded to claims leveled against them with a counterclaim referencing Abrams' comments and the tweeted statement sent to Buzzfeed. And the studios said that the statements "speak for themselves" but maintain the proposed Axanar film continues to represent an unfair appropriation of their intellectual property, and the report says that "plaintiffs Paramount and CBS told a California federal judge that their action remains pending." This means that the lawsuit is still open and they haven't decided how they will proceed yet.

For decades, the Paramount accepted the existence of fan films as their distribution was limited, but as technology allowed the films to circulate more easily and improve in quality, the studio made some changes to what they would tolerate. Paramount and CBS explained how the producers of Axanar infringed copyright, pointing out how they used the costumes and Vulcan appearance in the fan film.

Star Trek: Axanar raised over $638,000 to complete a full-length feature film and involves the likes of Richard Hatch, Kate Vernon, Deep Space Nine vet J. G. Hertzler, and Star Trek: Enterprise alum Gary Graham. Check out the synopsis:

Axanar takes place 21 years before the events of 'Where no Man Has Gone Before,' the first Kirk episode of the originalStar Trek. Axanar is the story of Garth of Izar, the legendary Starfleet captain who is Captain Kirk's hero ... Axanar tells the story of Garth and his crew during the Four Years War, the war with the Klingon Empire that almost tore the Federation apart. Garth's victory at Axanar solidified the Federation and allowed it to become the entity we know in Kirk's time. It is the year 2245 and the war with the Klingons ends here.

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