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‘Star Trek’ Fan Film Sued By Paramount Gets Boost From Klingon Speakers In Bid To Save ‘Axanar’

By Coburn Palmer
Published on: 22:00 PST, May 19, 2016

Star Trek is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year with a new movie, a museum exhibit honoring the crew of the Enterprise, and a lawsuit targeting its most dedicated fans.

Alec Peters raised $100,000 on Kickstarter for a 20-minute fan-fiction film, titled Prelude to Axanar, that has generated two million views and is now the target of a copyright infringement lawsuit.

The story doesn’t end there, however.

After fighting CBS and Paramount in court since the movie first premiered in 2014, Peters has received a boost from members of the Language Creation Society. The group argues the Klingon language, created by Marc Okrand for the 1984 film Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, has become so widespread that it has passed beyond the use of copyright.

The group argues that, since Okrand initially claimed to have learned the Klingon language from a captured alien warrior, he and the studio cannot claim ownership now to help their lawsuit.

The fictional language has spread among Star Trek fans worldwide and is now so widespread that speakers of Klingon claim the language has taken on a life of its own, according to court documents.

“Once in the hands of so many, it was inevitable that the language would free the bounds of its textual chains.”

The lawsuit began years ago after Peters was able to raise $100,000 on Kickstarter to make his work of fan fiction documenting a four-year war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.

The short film was a tremendous success until CBS and Paramount sued seeking $150,000 in statutory damages. Peters responded, arguing his fan fiction doesn’t harm the studios because he isn’t using any main Star Trek characters.

Peters has clearly replicated the Vulcan character Soval, who first appeared in the Enterprise series episode “Broken Bow,” though, along with Spacedock scenes and elements of Kirk’s captain’s uniform.

The lawsuit is a case study of contradictions.

Studios don’t usually sue fans who create their own films because of the potential fallout, as Georgetown intellectual-property expert Rebecca Tushnet explained to Bloomberg.

“They realize that their fans are their biggest assets. You don’t want to go after your own fans, because it can create a backlash.”

Paramount hasn’t explained why it’s chosen to sue Peters and not other fans who have created their own works of art, but it may be because of the professional production value of the film, intellectual-property lawyer Aaron Moss told Bloomberg.

“The concern for the studios would be that if this is going to be a big deal, they need to get out in front of it.”

Prelude to Axanar was the advertisement Peters needed to raise $1.1 million on Kickstarter and Indiegogo for a planned feature-length film.

The lawsuit may hinge on whether Peters and his team can convince a judge their Star Trek fan fiction is transformative, meaning it adds original value to the copyrighted content as U.S. District Court Judge Gary Klausner explained in his ruling, reports Yahoo News.

“When viewed in a vacuum, each of these elements may not individually be protectable by copyright. Plaintiffs, however, do not seek to enforce their copyright in each of these elements individually. Rather, Plaintiffs’ copyright infringement claims are based on the Star Trek Copyrighted Works as a whole.”

What do you think? Should Peters be allowed to finish his Star Trek fan fiction?

[Image via Axanar YouTube]

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