CBS Studios and Paramount Pictures have filed a lawsuit against the producers of “Axanar” for alleged copyright infringement. Axanar, an upcoming fan-made film produced by Axanar productions and Alec Peters, has raised more than $1 million on crowdfunding sites Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
According to Deadline, both CBS and Paramount are seeking monetary damages and an injunction which will restrain Peters and his production company from distributing, marketing and selling Axanar. The copyright-infringement suit was filed on Tuesday in US District Court in Los Angeles.
“The Axanar works infringe plaintiffs’ works by using innumerable copyrighted elements of Star Trek, including its settings, characters, species, and themes,” reads the claim.
“The Axanar works are intended to be professional-quality productions that, by defendants’ own admission,unabashedly take Paramount’s and CBS’s intellectual property and aim to ‘look and feel like a true Star Trekmovie.’
The producers then released a statement on their website saying that Axanar uses the network’s intellectual property, provided that the film will not be used for commercial purposes.
“That means we can never charge for anything featuring their marks or intellectual property and we will never sell the movie, DVD/Blu-ray copies, T-shirts or anything which uses CBS owned marks or intellectual property,” they said in a report from Variety.
Axanar, dubbed as the “first-fully professional, independent Star Trek film” follows the story of Garth of Izar, a hero of Captain Kirk’s. Entertainment Weekly reports that the movie will delve on Garth and his crew’s struggle through the Four Years War as they battle the Klingon Empire.
Peters, for his part, “plan to fully defend” their case. “We’re doing what other fan films have done for 30 years. Maybe CBS feels threatened by the quality of what we’re doing,” he said.
Axanar is set to begin production in February this year.
