Finally, a relatively happy ending to this Star Trek kerfuffle where the owners of the Star Trek franchise (Paramount and CBS) took Axanar Production (an independent film company created by a massive trekie) to court for allegedly infringing the various Star Trek related IPRs.
Following a successful launch of its 20 minutes fan-man clip 'Prelude to Axanar' in 2014, Axanar had intended to go boldly where no man has gone before by creating a 90 minutes fan-made movie as a tribute to the Star Trek franchise. After a stellar crowdfunding campaign which raised around $640,000, Axanar proceeded with preproduction, acquiring numerous high end props and costumes.
However, all these did not go down well with the owners of Star Trek, even though Axanar had garnered the support of actor George Takei (who played Captain Sulu), JJ Abrams and Justin Lin (directors and producers of the recent remakes). Paramount and CBS proceeded to launch a lawsuit at the Federal Court of California claiming a slew of IPRs infringement. Nevertheless, Axanar refused to back down as understandably in their own mind they would have thought that 'damn it, I'm a fan, not a bootlegging infringer'.
Fearing a massive backlash by its innumerable pointy eared fans, the owners finally saw that any resistance is futile and so decided to set their phaser to stun instead of giving it all she's got (3 references in one sentence! Boom!). And so a settlement was agreed by both parties. Instead of a 90 minute movie, Axanar would instead make two 15 minutes clip which they will beam up to YouTube without any advertisements. Hopefully now that Axanar has got a 'Make it so' from Star Trek's owners, both parties can finally live long and prosper.
For further details of the settlement see: