Trouble with Top Gun: Maverick

It might be nothing, it might be a lot. But well-know Hollywood lawyer Marc Toberoff has hit Paramount Pictures with a copyright complaint for Top Gun: Maverick.

Toberoff is known for leading legal battles on behalf of the heirs to older comic books characters, and claimed copyright on such characters as Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Thor, Falcon, Black Widow and Captain Marvel, despite these lawsuits against Disney nowhere near completion. He did manage to settle a case regarding Predator, but here is wasn't heirs reclaiming old copyrights, but the original screenwriters.

According to a number of media with insight in the film industry, including The Hollywood Reporter, the heirs of Ehud Yonay who wrote the famous "Top Guns" article in a 1983 "California" magazine story on which the original movie is based, in this case claims that they have reclaimed the rights in 2020 and made Paramount aware, only to be ignored. A cease and desist letter was also sent on May 11th, 2022 just weeks before the release of the movie.

Paramount's main claim is that the movie is not a derivative of the original copyrighted story, but on the screenplay made by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr who also worked on the sequel. The second claim is that the movie was "sufficiently completed" prior to the loss of the rights to the original story in 2022.

As its still debated whether or not the original movie really needed to purchase the copyright for the original magazine article as Ehud Yonay was given credit for coming up with the suggestion in the first place, but didn't write the screenplay in any way, and the screenplay is questioned to not be derivative of Yonay's work, let alone the sequel.

The heirs claim to be entitled to revenue from the movie, and stop of distribution of the movie and a total stop of any additional movie.