On Tuesday, lawyers representing CBS and Paramount Studios sued Axanar Productions, a company formed by a group of fans attempting to make professional-quality Star Trek fan-fiction movies, for copyright infringement.

"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 Trek movie,’” the complaint reads (PDF).

Axanar Productions released a short 20-minute film called Prelude to Axanar in 2014, in which retired Starfleet leaders talk about their experiences in the Four Years War, a war between the Federation and the Klingons that occurred in the Star Trek universe before The Original Series began. The feature-length Axanar is scheduled to premier in 2016 and follows the story of Captain Kirk's hero, Garth of Izar. Both productions were funded on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, raising more than $1.1 million from fans.

Star Trek spinoff films have been made by amateurs for decades, and CBS and Paramount have largely encouraged the enthusiasm for the universe. But the Axanar films seem to have tread too close to the corporations’ own production standards.

In the complaint, CBS and Paramount noted that they have “plans to release a new Star Trek motion picture in 2016 (Star Trek Beyond), and a new Star Trek television series in January 2017."

Lawyers for CBS and Paramount also accused Axanar’s writer and producer, Alec Peters, as well as 20 unnamed defendants, of "using innumerable copyrighted elements of Star Trek, including its settings, characters, species, and themes.”

Axanar Productions has told investors that the film would be made by filmmaking professionals, "many of whom have worked on Star Trek itself,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. In August, Peters, who has few prior producing or writing credits, told The Wrap that he met with CBS, and the network told him he was not allowed to make money off the project. Still, CBS told The Wrap at the time that the network "has not authorized, sanctioned or licensed this project in any way, and this has been communicated to those involved."

"We continue to object to professional commercial ventures trading off our property rights and are considering further options to protect these rights,” CBS added at the time.

“CBS has a long history of accepting fan films,” Peters said in August. “I think Axanar has become so popular that CBS realizes that we’re just making their brand that much better.” On Axanar Production's site, an FAQ notes 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."

Instead of making money off the project, the fledgling production company says it wants to "make something so spectacular that it serves as a resume and calling card for our work in the industry."

Update 12/31/2015: Axanar Productions released a statement Wednesday evening from Peters. "First of all, I was disappointed to learn about this through an article in an industry trade," Peters wrote. "For several years, I’ve worked with a number of people at CBS on Star Trek-related projects, and I would have hoped those personal relationships would have warranted a phone call in advance of the filing of a legal complaint. Nevertheless, I know I speak for everyone at Axanar Productions when I say it is our hope that this can be worked out in a fair and amicable manner."

"Since the original Star Trek TV series, when the letter writing campaign by fans got NBC to greenlight a third season of Star Trek, fan support has been critical to the success of the franchise," he continued. "It is the Star Trek fans themselves who are most affected here, for by suing Axanar Productions to stop making our movie and collect so-called damages, CBS and Paramount are suing the very people who have enthusiastically maintained the universe created by Gene Roddenberry so many years ago." You can read the whole statement here.

Beyond the accusation of copyright infringement, CBS and Paramount are asking for for damages "of up to $150,000 for each separate Star Trek Copyrighted Work infringed" from Prelude to Axanar as well as injunctive relief to stop 2016's Axanar from being produced and distributed.

”Prelude to Axanar is directly and unabashedly intended to be a derivative work of Star Trek, or a Star Trek work, and uses numerous copyrighted elements from the Star Trek works,” the complaint contends.

CBS and Paramount also accuse Axanar Productions of copying the look and feel of the Star Trek franchise, "including the uniforms of the Starfleet, which are bright solid-colored sweaters with black pants,” as well as "the characters’ costumes, their pointy ears, and their distinctive hairstyle.”

"Star Trek is a treasured franchise in which CBS and Paramount continue to produce new original content for its large universe of fans," a CBS spokesperson told Ars. "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."

Listing image by Prelude to Axanar