Is anything like the propulsion systems (warp/impulse drives) copyrighted from being use in other sci-fi novels?
I'm currently writing a sci-fi/fantasy novel that mostly takes place on a star/space-ship but I'm stuck on if i'm available to use names of the propulsion drives, such as Warp or even Impulse drives.
I am however quite inspired by star trek, but I don't want to copy from their work but There's a lot of grey area on what a person in Sci-fi in general can work with and what they can't and propulsion seems to be in a particular grey area that I don't know what to do about.
I've read one or two things that says it is copy-righted then another saying it isn't. It's rather confusing.
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Warp drives first appeared in science-fiction back in the early nineteen-thirties. As a result warp drives are neither copyright nor trademarked as belonging to Star Trek. Impulse drives is a term coined in the Star Trek franchise. So it may be trademarked by them. Certainly it is more identified with Star Trek. Phasers definitely coined by Star Trek. But fear not, scienc-fiction was always rich in exotic and futuristic weaponry. Such as blasters, disintegrators, vaporizers, disrupters (yes, there not purely a Klingon invention).
Check out older works of science-fiction where there were multiple names for faster-than-light drives. Hyperdrives, ultradrives, supradrives, second-order drives, even FTL drives, and overdrives are all names for FTL concepts. Most cinematic and TV science-fiction franchises have mainly strip-mined prose science-fiction for the names of their toys.
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As mentioned, the nature of what a Warp Drive does is a scientific possibility and considered a possible near future tech with NASA working on a similar in principle Warp Drive (in Star Trek, the Warp Drive creates a spacial distortion that makes space contract as the ship's bow moves towards it and expand as it moves astern. Thus, you do not violate FTL because you are really making the distance shorter, rather than going faster.). Impulse Drive may have a similar emerging tech inspiration behind it, but I'm not as familiar with it and Star Trek's use of it as a speed is a hard limit demarcation and avoids a hard science number so the ship moves at plot speed (i.e. Impulse is the fastest a ship can go without using warp, while the captain may use a fraction of impulse for a slower speed ("One Quarter Impulse" is a maneuverable in narrow passage speed, while Impulse seems to be able to cover the space of a solar system with reasonable time). It's likely that the "impulse drive" is an engine that can be adjusted for speed, and correlates to "Full Steam Ahead" in naval parlance. "Full Steam" is not a speed, but rather "the fastest the engines can move us" (in the U.S. Navy, the joke speed of "Full Bendix" to mean faster then "Full Steam." The lever on the bridge that functions (That round one that has a bar that surrounds the desired setting) as the method to adjust speed is made by a company called "Bendix", which does or did at one point stamp the company logo above the max setting. The joke being that the max speed is so desired that the helmsman adjusting the control broke past the "Full" setting and the highlighter is over Bendix logo... In some cases, the vehicle can actually go faster, if regulators are disabled. The regulators are there to prevent wear and tear, but if the choice is moving this ship at a speed that will break the engines faster or the ship is destroyed, it can be better to save the ship and put into safe port with an engine that needs to be replaced sooner than expected).
Warp is used by other franchises and is described as functioning similar to Star Trek. The video game Stellaris used to have Warp as one of three possible FTL systems for ships (the other two were a series of Hyper-Lanes - extradimensional tunnels that connected each star to fixed stars, sort of like deep space 9's wormhole with a dash of Contacts ancient network or connections, implied to be built by something, but everyone who uses it only knows how to get to them and not how to make more routes... or who made them now - and Worm Hole generators - a "gate" station outside the ship could create an artificial wormhole to any star system in range... if the gate goes, the ships might be stranded if there is no other gate in range. A fourth system called "Jump Drives" could be researched later in the game, and basically acted as a teleportation system. Recent updates changed FTL so everyone starts with Warp Drive but alternatives exist and can be researched).
The Stellaris FTL systems generally lined up with commonly used FTL drives that exist in scifi as it homaged a lot of the space opera genre tropes. Warp was Star Trek, Hyper-Lane was best aligned with Star Wars and Contact, Worm Hole Functioned the gates like Babylon Five, (though you didn't need an end gate), and Jump Drive functioned like Battlestar Galactica's FTL, with some in lore draw backs related to "Warp" from Warhammer 40,000 (each jump could trigger an endgame event featuring extra-dimensional aliens that emerged from the Jump Drive's tearing of realities.). The changes added two new systems with Natural Wormholes and "Jump Gates" with the former being a stable wormhole between two stars on the map and the latter being more like Babylon Five in that you needed an end point, but the end point was not fixed... if a gate existed in a system, it could send and receive from other systems friendly to you.
Again, fans explained the FTL system lore in terms of other scifi fictional comparisons and even the developers described the systems by showing where the got inspiration. Because they were general descriptions and the actual working mechanics of FTL drives was never discussed, it wasn't an issue. "Warp" like Star Trek is fine. But your Warp Engines cannot use dilithium crystals to regulate the matter/anti-matter reaction that powered the drive. Your engine design is on you. Your scientific way around FTL is not. And you don't have to turn into a newt to go Warp 10 (though you should probably change your speed ticks in another way).
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Yes, it can be confusing. The basics are simple, through commonly misunderstood, but there are grey area along the borders.
The first and most basic rule of copyright is that you cannot copyright an idea, you can only copyright the expression of an idea. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back, is an idea for a story. That same idea has been used a billion times. There is no copyright infringement involved because you can't copyright an idea, only the specific expression of an idea.
Where is begins to get murky are the following areas:
How big a section constitutes a copyright violation. The word "warp drive" alone is probably not large enough to enjoy protection, but "The engines cann'ae take it, Captain," might well be. Similarly, if you start to see all the same technology names showing up, even if they are just individual words, that might start to raise eyebrows.
Is something a derivative work? If you were to write a brand new story obviously derived from Star Trek, even if you did not quote any words from the original, if you called it Star Hike and used Weft Drive, and impetuous engines and fought Stickoffs, it is likely to be deemed a copyright violation because it is so obviously derivative of Star Trek.
Ultimately, these things are a matter of judgement: the judgement of a judge or jury if someone decides to sue you for copyright infringement.
On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with being inspired by a work. Every successful work tends to spawn a flock of similar works in the same spirit and tone as the original.
Spirit and tone, like ideas, are not copyrightable. Write an original work in the same spirit and tone as Star Trek, and you should be fine. But no one can tell you for certain that simply avoiding the use of a word here or a word there will ensure you never get sued. It does not work that way.
And, as always, if you are worried you are trespassing on the boundaries of the law, consult a lawyer, not a web forum.
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Disclaimer: I am no lawyer or otherwise law expert, all the following is to the best of my knowledge and does not constitute legal advise; when in doubt, as a lawyer.
There are several things to consider.
First, the general idea. In the case of Warp drives, the general idea would be: A machine that allows faster-than-light travel by manipulating (warping) the spacetime around it.
The general idea is definitely not protected in any way. The only legal tool to protect ideas are patents, but those only come into play if you actually want to build something. That is, even if there were a patent on Warp drives (I doubt it, but who knows), it would not stop you from using similar technology in your stories (indeed I think you could even base your fictional device closely on the description in such a patent; but about that I'm not completely sure, because the text of the patent is probably copyright-protected as well).
Next, the detailed workings of the machine. For example, for Star Trek's Warp drive, this would be to produce a Warp field that causes a subspace bubble which then distorts spacetime. That's concrete enough that I'd expect it to be protected, but even if not, it is certainly concrete enough that you might face litigation. And even litigation that you win is generally worse than no litigation at all. Remove the subspace part, and I think it might already be general enough.
Note that basing your description on actual science should be a fair game, since facts are not copyright-protected. So e.g. basing your Warp drive replacement on the hypothetical Alcubierre drive should be safe (of course copying the wording of any article about it would not be OK, but you'd not want to do that anyway).
Next, the name. Here not only copyright has to be considered, but also trademarks. For example, the term Star Trek is trademarked, so even after the first Star Trek series goes out of copyright, you still cannot freely use that name. This applies even if your content is in no other way related to the Star Trek universe (e.g. say you are writing about a trek of Hollywood stars).
About the name Warp drive, I don't think copyright has anything to say about it (it's basically a direct description of what the drive is supposed to do, which is to warp spacetime). However given that the name is generally associated with the Star Trek franchise, it might be trademarked. Then again, other answers mentioned the use of the term in non-Star Trek contexts (including earlier ones), so it may not be trademarked. But then, AFAIK earlier use of the term by others is no guarantee of non-trademark; only if the term was in common use, this would prevent the trademark. If you used the term before the trademark was established, I think you are allowed to continue using it, but that doesn't give others the right to use it, too.
An important part of it is that you lose a trademark if you don't enforce it; this means that companies are likely to do so even where the chances of winning in court are slim (especially given that there's a good chance that the other side will give in before the case even goes to court). Again, you probably want to avoid litigation even when your chances to win are high, so the best bet would be to avoid such names, especially given that it is easy to give your own names to it.
The simplest possibility is to just use the generic term FTL drive. Or you could name it after whoever invented it in your universe (just like the Diesel engine is named after Rudolf Diesel or the Edison phonograph is named after Thomas Edison), Or you could drive it after the fictional fuel is consumes (like the petrol engine/gasoline engine), or something else that is used in its mechanism (maybe it makes use of tachyons to control the spacetime bubble, then it could be called tachyon drive).
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