Paramount Wins Top Gun: Maverick Lawsuit Four Years Later

21 hours ago 13

Hannah Gearan (she/her) is has been writing for ScreenRant for over three years. Her deep cinema love traces back to age 11, when she equipped herself with a spiral-bound notebook, rated all the films she watched, and declared herself a critic. About a decade later, she received a BA from Wesleyan University, where she studied Film, Environmental Studies, and Writing. Hannah’s short film, Toxic Faucets, has screened at numerous film festivals, including the Independent Film Festival of Boston (IFFBoston). As a Movie News writer now, she draws upon her vast experience studying, making, and analyzing film as she approaches dynamic breaking stories.

Paramount has finally won their Top Gun: Maverick lawsuit several years later. Maverick was the long-awaited sequel to 1986's Top Gun, which starred Tom Cruise and the late Val Kilmer and was a favorite of the decade. That leading duo was back for Top Gun: Maverick, a film that incorporated newer stars and updated visual effects.

The wait paid off for the film, which became one of the highest-grossing movies of 2022. The film made just short of $1.5 billion worldwide, coming in behind only Avatar: The Way of Water's massive $2.3 billion haul. Maverick's commercial success was also matched by its critical praise, as reviewers appreciated its spectacle and story.

As confirmed by Deadline, Paramount has officially won its lawsuit for Top Gun: Maverick. After the production faced a copyright infringement lawsuit, it has now been determined that Maverick is not "substantially similar" to the original text on which the first film was based.

Judge Eric D. Miller expressed this in a statement to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The decision was made by a panel of judges that included Miller, Andrew D. Hurwitz, and Jennifer Sung. The full statement from Miller is found below:

The question under the extrinsic test is whether the expression in Maverick is substantially similar to the original expression in “Top Guns,” and it is not.

The panel affirmed the district court’s conclusion that Maverick did not share substantial amounts of the original expression of “Top Guns,” and plaintiffs therefore failed to establish a triable issue as to substantial similarity, as required to establish copyright infringement. The panel concluded that there was a lack of similarity in protectable elements of the article, and plaintiffs did not establish an original and protectable selection and arrangement of elements.

In May 1983, California magazine published an article called "Top Guns." This was penned by Ehud Yonay, and it chronicles the culture and experience of fighter pilots training for the U.S. Navy. The magazine is now defunct, shutting down in 1991.

Later on, Yonay sold his work to producers, who later used these ideas to make Top Gun. Yonay was credited as an inspiration for the original '80s action hit, and compensated through the initial rights' sale.

Yonay himself died in 2012, but his son and widow came forward in June 2022 to allege a copyright infringement that protected their rights to the original story. According to the duo, Paramount did not get a new license, and that the copyright to the article had returned to the Yonay estate in 2020.

This most recent decision comes after the copyright suit had already been initially dismissed in April 2024. At that time, the ruling declared Maverick not similar enough to "Top Guns" to warrant the lawsuit.

Now, the latest court ruling has fully confirmed this previous decision. Paramount has won this four-year-long battle, and in this case, it seems like it was rightly so. As a sequel, Top Gun: Maverick was eventually based more off of the characters established by the previous movie than any of the original content from Yonay's piece.