See opening to long-ass Harris Bomberguy video about plagiarism - the last big lawsuit authors won was in the nineteen goddamn seventies.
The franchise is explicitly based on this guy and his stories. They licensed the rights to it for the first movie. Second movie rolls around and suddenly they never heard of him?
It was a nonfiction article about the actual Top Gun school. The author, Ehud Yonay, was not a pilot at the school. There were no original characters, just depictions of actual real-world pilots. I think this was decided correctly.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Paramount has prevailed in a copyright lawsuit brought by the heirs to the author of a 1983 magazine story that inspired the original Top Gun accusing the studio of forging ahead with the blockbuster sequel without renegotiating a new license.
U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson, in an order dismissing the case on Friday, found that several elements from the film — including plot, theme, setting and dialogue — are “largely dissimilar” from Ehud Yonay’s article.
Responding to arguments that the works are similar because they both depict fighter pilots landing on an aircraft carrier, being shot down while flying and carousing at a bar, the court said they are “unprotected facts” or “familiar stock scenes.”
That partially served as the basis of a federal appeals court in 2020 reviving a lawsuit alleging that Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water infringed the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Zindel.
The dismissal puts to rest a legal headache for Paramount that could’ve impacted a potential third film to the franchise, which is being written by Maverick co-writer Ehren Kruger with director Joe Kosinksi in talks to direct.
It may serve as ammunition for Columbia Pictures in a copyright lawsuit it filed against George Gallo, who wrote the story that was developed into the 1995 action hit Bad Boys, to reassert its rights to the movie franchise.
The original article contains 967 words, the summary contains 225 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
