Court ruled there were enough similarities between the hit sequel and the 1983 article that inspired the original movie to rebuff Paramounts attempts to throw the suit out. PARAMOUNT PICTURES HAS failed to get the copyright lawsuit over Top Gun Maverick dismissed. On Wednesday Nov. 9 a judge rejected the studios motion to dismiss the suit saying it containsufficient well pleaded facts to support its claims of copyright infringement breach of contract and declaratory relief. Paramount will now have to file its answer to the suit no later than Nov. 28.
The lawsuit was brought by the family of Ehud Yonay, a journalist who wrote a 1983 article for California magazine called Top Guns which served as the basis for the original 1986 movie. Paramount at the time secured the exclusive movie rights to the story after it was published and Yonay received a based on credit as well. Yonay died in 2012 but his family began the process of retrieving the copyright to the Top Guns story in 2018 it officially reverted back to them in January 2020. While Top Gun Maverick went into production in May 2018, the lawsuit claims that it was not completed until May 2021 over a year after the Yonays retrieved the copyright. As such it accuses Paramount of going ahead with the film without securing a new license.
Paramount in its motion to dismiss the case per Variety argued that it no longer needed those rights because Top Gun Maverick was a work of fiction that had little in common with Yonays 1983 article. The Yonays had argued that it naturally follows that Maverick was derived from Ehud Yonays story noting the original film screenwriters Jim Cast and Jack Epps Jr. received a writing credit on the sequel. They also argued that Maverick like the original film reveals key elements that are substantially similar to those in Yonays article.
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