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‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Cleared of Copyright Infringement in Lower Court

Paramount Pictures emerged from the lower courts victorious in the copyright infringement lawsuit brought against 'Top Gun: Maverick.'

In a decision handed down last Friday, April 5, a district judge dismissed the case, brought by the family of Ehud Yonay, a journalist whose 1983 story for California magazine, “Top Guns,” inspired the original 1986 film. But U.S. District Court Judge Percy Anderson ultimately ruled that there weren’t enough similarities between Yonay’s original article and the sequel to support the copyright claim. The judge agreed with Paramount’s contention that the testimony was “unhelpful” because the witness filed to “filter out” the kind of factual similarities between the two works that are not protected by copyright law.

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