00:00In 50 years it turns out that Star Trek has had its time in the witness box, many times over.
00:05Quite a few of these cases have been tossed out of court owing to the ludicrous nature of the claims
00:08or the failure to provide direct evidence when needed. Still, others have involved a bitter fight
00:13all the way to the end. With that in mind, I'm Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture and here are 10
00:17biggest and weirdest lawsuits in Star Trek history. 10. The shoe is on the other foot.
00:22In 1980, Clarks of England, makers of Trek shoes, obtained the license to produce Star Wars branded
00:28sneakers for children. At nearly the same time, the Glenn Shoe Company announced that it would
00:32begin producing a line of licensed Star Trek branded shoes for children. Clarks was not happy
00:36about this. This would put the two companies in direct competition with each other in the
00:40sci-fi branded footwear market, though initially there was nothing to be done as Clarks did not
00:45have the rights to produce Star Trek products. It did, however, have the rights to the Trek label.
00:49They brought a suit to the Southern District of New York and sought to block the Glenn Shoe
00:53Company from selling any of its proposed Star Trek shoes. However, the suit was denied as the
00:57court deemed that the Trek shoes which were designed for adults and the Star Trek shoes
01:02which were made for children with images of Mr. Spock and the Starship Enterprise on them
01:05were not in competition with each other and there was little chance of confusion.
01:089. Bootleg tapes are deemed copyright infringement. In 1981, Les Rabinowitz was brought to court
01:15over the illegal distribution of Star Trek on VHS cassette. Paramount understandably did not
01:20take kindly to him profiting off their product, yet he made a compelling counter-argument. He stated
01:24that the pre-1978 airing of Star Trek had fallen into the public domain as the entire original series
01:30had been exhibited as a general publication without the copyright notice required by the
01:341909 Copyright Act. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the defence failed to impress the court and Rabinowitz
01:39was ordered to cease and desist his sale of the videotapes. As this coincided with a new
01:43surge in popularity after the release of Star Trek The Motion Picture and the studio was gearing up
01:47toward the release of Star Trek II The Wrath of Cannes, this case brought publicity to the franchise,
01:50even if it came at the cost of some diehard collectors. 8. Spock Plates Cause Trouble. The
01:56Hamilton Group is a company that primarily produces limited edition plates. It was one
02:00such plate that caused this legal action to be taken in 1984. They released an edition featuring
02:05Mr. Spock, along with a statement that read, After a 90 day firing period, these editions
02:10will be retired and the masters will be destroyed, meaning they could never be reopened. This was
02:14clearly to drum up extra interest and ensure a surge in purchases. However, in 1987, Hamilton
02:19put up more of these so-called limited edition plates, which caused a customer to complain
02:23to the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau. Hamilton then explained
02:27their 90 day firing period did not necessarily state that it would be 90 consecutive days,
02:32so they had done nothing wrong. However, they did offer a refund to the customer for the price
02:36of the plate and agreed to use clearer terminology going forward to avoid any such confusion.
02:417. Romulan Punk Rock. James White is the frontman for a punk rock band named the Romulans,
02:46formed in 1982. The name was derived from a combination of Romulus and Romans. This was
02:51a statement of the politics of ancient Rome and how they compared to the politics of Reagan
02:54era America in the 1980s. White attempted to register the band's name and logo in 1983,
02:59which Paramount Pictures quickly opposed. They claimed that Romulans had long been a part of
03:04the Star Trek franchise as the original Romulan commander and ship had appeared in 1966. Further to
03:09this, they had produced licensed material, merchandise and other goods with the name Romulan on them.
03:14The trademark trial and appeal board ruled against Paramount in this instance. They found that,
03:18while the company had produced these items as described, they had failed to do so while
03:22copyrighting the name Romulan. Therefore, they found that White was free to register his band's
03:27name and logo, thus a new era of pointy-eared punk rock began.
03:316. A Sexy Federation of Planets. Joanna Lindsay, author of Warrior's Woman was sued by Sharon Green,
03:36author of The Warrior Within. Here are both synopses starting with Warrior's Woman.
03:41Experienced in combat, but not in love, the beautiful untouched Amazon flies with Martha,
03:45her wise-cracking free-thinking computer, to a world where warriors reign supreme,
03:50and then into the arms of the one man she can never hope to vanquish, the bronzed barbarian,
03:55Shallan Linsighter. And, The Warrior Within.
03:58On assignment to a primitive planet where women are valued for their pliancy and eroticism,
04:03Terry encounters the huge barbarian Tammond, a blonde behemoth who appreciates her in an entirely
04:08different way from the men on her homeworld. Torn between attraction and rebelliousness,
04:12she begins a journey that will shape her life and the lives of those around her.
04:16While we immediately source copies of these novels, Green's lawsuit stated that Lindsay's
04:20Centura League of Confederated Planets was entirely too similar to her own Central Amalgamation. This,
04:26among other things, was the basis of her argument. The court threw out the case. They argued that Star
04:30Trek had beaten both authors to the punch with their United Federation of Planets. Besides, they continued,
04:36A Central Alliance of Worlds was hardly something that could be trademarked by any one author.
04:40No really, has anyone got any copies of those books?
04:425. DirecTV goes to court. The famous ad from 2006 parodied Star Trek 6 The Undiscovered Country. In it,
04:49William Shatner reprises the role of Captain Kirk, poking fun at the older movie. Chekov asks the captain
04:54if they should raise their shields, to which he replies, again with the shields? The ad was designed to
04:59boost sales for DirecTV. However, Time Warner took issue with the statement from the other company was
05:04advertising that their quality was superior to all other forms of television. They took DirecTV to
05:09court. Time Warner's argument was that the ad was a case of false advertising. The district court ruled
05:13in their favour, stating that it was a case of literal falsity. DirecTV was claiming that its picture
05:18quality was superior to what was commercially available, which was not the case at all. The
05:22case adopted the false by necessary implication doctrine which the Second Circuit affirmed.
05:274. Roddenberry v Roddenberry. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry divorced his wife Elaine in 1969,
05:34which was around the same time that the original series ended. The document was mostly handwritten
05:38and in it, Elaine was promised one half interest in future profit participation from Star Trek.
05:43In 1996, after Gene had passed away, Elaine brought a suit against his estate, managed by his widow,
05:48Majel Barrett, to collect her dues. She argued that there had been no limitations on what the one half
05:54interest meant and that she was due income from all of the Star Trek movies, merchandising and current
05:59series. The court disagreed that she was due anything from the movies or merchandising, though conceded that
06:03she be entitled to revenue from The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, as they were continuations of
06:08the original series. However, this decision was overturned by the court of appeals, as they found
06:13it unlikely that either party had intended this agreement to go beyond the original series, which
06:17in 1969 was considered a financial failure. Future movies and spin-off shows were unimaginable at that
06:22point, so they ruled that Elaine was not due anything.
06:25In 2002, Chase Masterson, real name Christiane Carrafano, discovered that someone had created a
06:34fake profile for her on Matchmaker.com. The profile described certain sexual exploits that she liked,
06:39as well as stating that she wanted a man who could dominate her both in and out of bed. The profile
06:44included her photo, home address and telephone number. Masterson soon received disturbing and
06:50threatening phone calls, along with less insidious, yet still unwanted, messages from Star Trek fans.
06:55She brought a suit against Matchmaker.com for defamation and invasion of privacy, but the
06:59district court dismissed the claims. The defence argued that, even though much of the information
07:03had been provided as answers to the site's personality form generators, that alone did not
07:08leave them an information content provider. The website was then immune from any responsibility
07:13under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, even though the court conceded that the
07:18consequences of such immunity were deplorable. 2. Nimoy v. Paramount. In 1972, Leonard Nimoy met
07:25Henry Fonda on the set of The Alpha Caper, after which they remained friends. Three years later,
07:30Nimoy and his wife Sandra Zoffer joined Fonda and his wife Shirley May Adams for dinner after a
07:34performance of the play he was appearing in in Darrow. During this dinner, Fonda asked Nimoy what he
07:39thought of the Spock billboards all over town. What billboards? Nimoy replied. He had seen Spock's face on
07:45merchandise for quite some time, yet never given it much thought. However, the sexual nature of the
07:49Heineken ad, in which drinking beer makes Spock's ears rise, he found to be in bad taste. He discovered
07:55that Heineken had not received permission to use his likeness, though he also found that Paramount had
08:00not been paying him for merchandising rights in several years. He sued the company, going so far as
08:04to hold up any production on Star Trek The Motion Picture until the case was resolved. With the help from
08:09Jeffrey Katzenberg, a payment was delivered to Nimoy and the case was settled. 1. Axanar. The Axanar fan
08:15film production is probably the most well-known lawsuit surrounding the franchise. Fan productions
08:20have existed for years, yet Alec Peters' prelude to Axanar drew the ire of CBS. Peters released a
08:2521-minute film that was to lead into a 90-minute feature. However, there is more to this than a simple
08:31ish case of straightforward copyright. Around the same time that Prelude to Axanar was released,
08:35there were several fan projects in production, such as Star Trek New Voyages, Star Trek Continues and
08:40Star Trek Renegades. The latter was billed as a new pilot, which was then switched to a web series.
08:45CBS took the Axanar production to court, citing several issues. The scene set on Vulcan, released
08:50in 2015, was deemed indistinguishable from the content they had already produced. Pre-production
08:55was underway under Star Trek Discovery, which certainly shared story elements with Axanar,
09:00including the Klingon War itself. Also cited was the use of the Klingon language and ships,
09:04along with the Vulcans. Seeking a settlement, the Axanar team offered the production to CBS,
09:09free of charge, yet this was rejected. In May 2016, CBS then released a new set of guidelines
09:15for any fan production to follow, though the restrictions they imposed were described by
09:19Peters as draconian. A short time later, JJ Abrams spoke at an event promoting Star Trek Beyond,
09:25during which he announced that the lawsuit would shortly be going away. However, this did not turn
09:29out to be the case. CBS proceeded with the suit, and both parties settled in early 2017,
09:34with an agreement that was very similar to the first one proposed back in 2015. Though the original
09:38plan of a 90 minute film was out the window, two 15 minute episodes were permitted. While the release
09:43of these episodes was delayed by over a year due to COVID-19, there is good news to come. In summer 2021,
09:49the full 2 hour audio drama of Axanar will be released on their website, read by JG Hertler.
09:55And that is everything for our list today. You reckon we missed anything? Please drop it into
09:59the comments below. Please don't forget to like, share and subscribe. And remember that you can
10:02catch Trek Culture over on Twitter, at TrekCulture. You can catch myself, at Sean Ferrick as well.
10:07Whatever you do till we see you again, make sure you look after yourselves and live long and prosper.
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