Monday, March 14th, 2016
On Friday, Loeb & Loeb, the attorneys for Paramount/CBS, filed an amended complaint. Basically since they missed the filing deadline for a response to our motion to dismiss, they went directly to amending the complaint.
Here’s Axanar Production’s statement concerning the amended complaint:
As you know, Axanar Productions and Alec Peters filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed against them by Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios on the grounds that the complaint was deficient in various respects. Rather than opposing the motion to dismiss, Plaintiffs opted to amend their complaint to attempt to respond to the deficiencies we raised in our motion, which they are entitled to do under the procedural rules. Plaintiffs filed their amended complaint yesterday.
We will have an opportunity to publicly respond to Plaintiffs’ amended complaint later this month by filing a responsive pleading (either a motion to dismiss or answer) with the court. We appreciate that supporters are understandably anxious to know what is going on. We ask for your patience while we work with our lawyers at Winston & Strawn to formulate a response. There’s a legal process in play which is in the hands of our capable legal team, whom we have absolute confidence in. We will update donors and fans as soon as we can.
Before anyone decides to start asking any more questions, please understand that this is about all we can say on this matter until W&S has had an opportunity to thoroughly go through everything. Speculation now – public or private – isn’t particularly helpful.
I wish I could share our attorney’s thoughts on the amended complaint with you all. Let me just say, ignore everything you hear from the armchair lawyers. None of them have been right about anything so far. And what is happening behind the scenes will continue to surprise people.
Alec Peters
Executive producer
Are you able to post the full amended complaint?
There is a link on the Axanar Fan Page.
As Alec says above, we just need to stand down and let the folks behind the curtain do their magic. Grinding teeth and making noise may hurt our cause more than help. Meanwhile, we can all go see Deadpool again, probably one of the better Marvel flicks done yet, although maybe you guys could give them some tips on how to make CGI more realistic. That wasn’t too impressive.
Could you enlighten us as to the U.S. Postal address of whatever officer(s) of CBS/Paramount has (have) the authority to call the dogs off?
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the question. I’ll ask the folks at Winston & Strawn for this information, but I’m not sure what their reaction will be. If they give me an address, I’ll post it here. If they’re reluctant, I’ll let you know that, too.
LLAP,
Mike Bawden
PR for Axanar Productions
I look forward to hearing what the folks as Winston and Strawn have to say about this query!
I think this is the real reason why Paramount/CBS have all of a sudden decided to enforce their intellectual property.
http://www.businessinsider.com/viacom-may-sell-a-significant-portion-of-the-4-billion-paramount-pictures-movie-studio-2016-2
If times were good, and the Star Trek franchise was healthy, I don’t think we’d be seeing the “Guards at the Gates” mentality that we’re seeing now. I think there is a genuine fear now that the upcoming movies will not be successful. They seem to making major changes in reshoots.
http://deadline.com/2016/03/shohreh-aghdashloo-star-trek-beyond-paramount-1201718696/
I can’t even speculate how the Axanar vs The Known Universe will turn out, but I do believe it will have a significant impact on fan films everywhere.