8 Star Trek Episodes That PISSED OFF Other Franchises
6. Star Trek: First Contact Vs First Contact
Star Trek: First Contact is the second Next Generation-era film and is generally regarded as one of the best Trek movies to date. It featured the return of the Borg, the depiction of the first meeting between Humans and the Vulcans, and, best of all, the Enterprise-E makes its glorious debut. It was seen as a marked improvement on Star Trek Generations, which had suffered a bit at the box office and with its critical reception.
However, after the release of the film, Paramount Pictures were slapped with a lawsuit from the estate of Murray Leinster (born William Jenkins). The lawsuit alleged that Star Trek: First Contact violated trademark protections on Leinster's 1945 novella 'First Contact'. This novella ironically won a retrospective Hugo Award in 1996, and is generally accepted as the origin for the term 'Universal Translator.'
The Eastern District of Virginia found that the phrase “First Contact” as applied to alien encounters may very well have originated with Leinster in 1945. However, since that time, this term had moved into common use as a way to describe the initial meeting between mankind and extraterrestrial beings. The Court ruled in favour of Paramount Pictures.