Earlier today we were all stunned by the announcement that Paramount/CBS had filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Star Trek fan production Axanar.

(The full complaint can be found here.)

Fan productions are nothing new to the Star Trek Universe and there have been several high profile and very professional ones in recent years including Axanar and Star Trek Continues.

It’s that very professionalism that seems to be bothering the studios.

In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter Paramount/CBS had this to say:

“Star Trek is a treasured franchise in which CBS and Paramount continue to produce new original content for its large universe of fans.  The producers of Axanar are making a Star Trek picture they describe themselves as a fully professional independent Star Trek film.  Their activity clearly violates our Star Trek copyrights, which, of course, we will continue to vigorously protect.”

In an interview with The Wrap in August this year the Executive Producer of Axanar, Alec Peters, told them:

he and his team met with CBS last week but the network didn’t offer any specific guidelines concerning what his crew can and cannot do — the network simply told him that they can’t make money off the project.

 

In keeping with that guideline Axanar Productions asserts on their official website that:

Axanar is an independent project that uses the intellectual property of CBS under the provision that Axanar is totally non-commercial.  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.

In response to the lawsuit Alec Peters released a statement on their official Facebook:

The production, which was to begin filming in January, has created a hashtag in support of the film #IStandWithAxanar.