Paramount Asks Judge to Dismiss ‘Top Gun’ Heirs’ Copyright Lawsuit

Paramount Pictures PARA.O has asked a California federal court to throw out a lawsuit claiming that the 2022 blockbuster “Top Gun: Maverick” violated a copyright belonging to the heirs of reporter Ehud Yonay, whose article “Top Guns” inspired the original “Top Gun” movie.

Paramount told the court on Monday that the heirs’ case should fail because “Maverick” is not similar to the article other than their “shared subject of Top Gun and the fighter pilots who teach and train there, to which Plaintiffs have no special right.”

Yonay’s widow Shosh Yonay and son Yuval Yonay said in a dueling motion that “Maverick” was a derivative work of “Top Guns” and that Paramount “ignores the plain similarities between its Top Gun movies and the Story from which the films were literally derived.” They asked the court to rule that “Maverick” infringed their copyright in the article.

Read the source article at Nasdaq