796 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 79 PART 5 SEPTEMBER 2021
In British Columbia, it is appropriate to take judicial notice of the fact that
a Kardassian is an alien species portrayed in Star Trek: Berry v. LaBelle, 2010
BCSC 239.
Jaspreet (Jessie) Kaur Sunner was reappointed as a member of the Surrey
Police Board for a term ending June 30, 2023.
The BC Civil Liberties Association recently handed out its 2021 awards,
bestowing the Reg Robson Award on Dr. Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond and the
Excellency in Legal Advocacy Award on Alison M. Latimer.
In Lucasfilm Ltd. v. High Frontier and Committee for a Strong, Peaceful America,
622 F. Supp. 931 (1985), the U.S. District Court, District of Columbia
rejected the claim that the plaintiff’s “STAR WARS” trademark had been
infringed. The court explained the situation as follows. First, “not so long
ago, in a studio far, far away from the policymakers in Washington, D.C.,
George Lucas conceived of an imaginary galaxy where fantastic creatures
and courageous knights battled an evil empire with spaceships, ‘blaster’
guns and light sabers”—an “imaginative fantasy” that (by that point) had
been “marketed … in three enormously popular films”. Second, “meanwhile,
in the real world of defense strategy and international politics, newspapers,
politicians, scientists and spokesmen of allied and enemy nations
have chosen to characterize the Reagan Administration’s Strategic Defense
Initiative (SDI)”, which “seeks to develop defenses against a nuclear attack
with weapons based in space somewhat reminiscent of those depicted in
the STAR WARS movies”, as “its ‘star wars’ program.” The program was very
controversial, and the plaintiff “fears that associating STAR WARS with this
political controversy will injure the valuable goodwill it has achieved by
developing a mark associated with imaginary battles among fantastic creatures
in distant worlds”. However, “when politicians, newspapers and the
public generally use the phrase star wars for convenience, in parody or
descriptively to further a communication of their views on SDI, plaintiff has
no rights as owner of the mark to prevent this use of STAR WARS … Since
Jonathan Swift’s time, creators of fictional worlds have seen their vocabulary
for fantasy appropriated to describe reality.”
“Filibuster”: originally from the Dutch word vrijbuiter, meaning “robber”,
“pirate”, “plunderer”, from vribuyt (“plunder” (16th c.)), from vrij (“free”) +
buyt (“booty”, “loot”). It passed into Spanish usage as filibustero to mean
pirating or hijacking as the ships used by Caribbean pirates were called filibote.