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Old June 21st 04, 05:16 PM
Jaxtraw
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Default We have the basic elements for a "warp drive"

"Midjis" @ . wrote in message
. 50...
"LawsonE" wrote:

But you can't call it that, even if you get it to work. Paramount will
sue.



I would wonder about this. Did they trademark the term 'warp drive'? I

am
sure I have heard it used in other stories without any apparent legal
problems. Was there not a 'warp drive' postulated that involved the
generation of a gravity well in front of the ship, for a 'carrot and
stick' approach?


It's an interesting question of whether science-fiction can trademark the
future, especially if the trademarked term were a natural description of the
device. As far as "Warp Drive" goes, it's a contraction of "Time Warp Drive"
(in the pilot, they talk of "time warp factor 4" or whatever), but it's come
to mean a drive which warps space or spacetime. I think there were sci-fi
creators using the term "time warp" well before Star Trek, tho I must admit
I have no references to prove this

More relevant to reality perhaps might be the term "space elevator". It's a
term which is both fundamentally descriptive of function (as opposed to say,
"liftomatic" but it's also kind of snappy and I wouldn't be that
surprised if somebody wanted to grab the rights to it- "Ride to the edge of
space with SPACE ELEVATOR- the first and still the best!" kind of thing

Back to Trek, that series' terminology has uniquely gained a foothold in the
english language- Warp Drive, Transporter Beam, Phaser, Tractor Beam, Photon
Torpedo and so on. Maybe the terms (except Phaser and Photon Torpedo) are
too generic to be trademarked. I hope that's the case. If there ever is a
relativistic FTL drive, it really deserves to be called a Warp Drive

Ian
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