From page 21 and 22 of the Brady Games Official Player's Guide
Star Trek Canon
Canon, n. "A body of rules, principles, or standards accepted as axiomatic and universally binding, as in a field of study or art."
Star Trek fans, like me, have always enjoyed discussing and listing the 'known facts' that have been revealed in the show. But to avoid argument, it was necessary to be strict about the difference between what is official and what isn't.
Official Star Trek info is rigidly defined. Nothing is considered to be real unless it has been used or explained in an episode. All the books, novels, lists, products, and other compilations of Star Trek information are not canon.
Paramount gave us this same hard-and-fast rule. We could only use canonical information that appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Since Paramount had the responsibility of approving every single card in the game, this meant we had to be able to justify every single fact and piece of information on the cards!
The author is this passage is credited as Tom Braunlich
From his
Wikipedia entry;
Thomas Braunlich, son of Frank H. Braunlich Jr. and Phyllis Braunlich, is from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is a journalism graduate.[1][2] Braunlich and Rollie Tesh were world champions of Pente, a game originally published by Parker Brothers, and later by Decipher.[3] In 1993, Braunlich and Tesh came to Decipher with their idea for a licensed collectible card game, the result of which was the Star Trek: The Next Generation Customizable Card Game (1994).[3][4][5]