The Star trsk dudes have sold lience rights to those publishers
More importantly tho', said publishers are probably not going to be too happy about someone infringing on their license, producing a potential competitive title (particularly since Star Trek games aren't particularly good in the first place). Mods of course are different, since they rely on a licensed product. Suing people costs lots of money.
Only for individuals. Business entities like Paramount Pictures, and I assume the estate of Gene Roddenberry, have lawyers at their beck and call, whom are being payed obscene amounts of otherwise perfectly good money regardless of whether those lawyers are in legal proceedings against fans, or hitting on their secretaries. Parody in many places does.
Like that time Penny Arcade parodied Strawberry Shortcake? Yeah that worked out really well. If you don't have the money to fight it in court, it does make any difference what so ever, what rights you have. Big company's will trample you at the first chance they get. When was the last time you heard of a Star Trek fan losing a lawsuit to Paramount over a fan based creation?
There's no record of something before it happens. Just because it hasn't happened in the past, doesn't mean it couldn't happen in the future. Am I wrong in thinking that its not actualy paramount that are the problem, its whoever now has the rights to the ditital/game liecence?
Yes. You're correct. The people who have the rights to the video game licenses can sue you for lost profits and infringing on their (presumably exclusive) license to reproduce video games set in the Star Trek universe. That's what Copyright is. A (theoretically) time limited monopoly on creative works. Now Gene Roddenberry died in 1991 so we should be seeing legal fan fiction in about 2061 - by which time Star Trek will hopefully seem a bit dated. I don't think fan stuff is usually jumped on (except by nintendo) unless they try to charge for the work.
It depends. If you're infringing on someones Trademark (like Pacman or Mario) the company who owns it, must defend it aggressively (they have to take you to court), or lose it forever. This is not the case for copyrighted materials - there is no risk of a person ever losing copyright, unless they specifically chose to.As for Dragon Ball Z, that's basically just another version of "Journey to the west", which is in the public domain, so no worries there. Star Trek however still has 54 years to go.