Top Gun: Maverick – A New Legal Dogfight Alleges the Sequel is an Unauthorized Derivative Work
Top Gun: Maverick is the year’s highest-grossing film at the box office, but there is a copyright dispute brewing off the big screen. As audiences are aware, Top Gun: Maverick is the widely-anticipated sequel to 1986’s Top Gun, but it is likely less well known that the original film was inspired by an article. In 1983, California magazine published an article called “Top Guns” by Ehud Yonay, profiling pilots at San Diego’s Navy Fighter Weapons School in Miramar, then a naval air station and training base.
Weeks later, on May 18, 1983, Paramount secured the motion picture rights to “Top Guns” via an assignment of rights, and the credits in 1986’s Top Gun even included the following: “Suggested by Ehud Yonay’s article ‘TOP GUNS’ in California Magazine.” In 2012, Mr. Yonay passed away.
Fast forward to June 6, 2022, when Mr. Yonay’s widow and son filed a lawsuit against Paramount in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (ten days after the Top Gun Maverick’s US release).
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“Games for Everyone” – Human Rights and Large Sporting Events
With the Government’s recent proposals on reforming human rights law and the upcoming Commonwealth Games in Birmingham during July and August, it seems a fitting opportunity to consider the theme of human rights in sport and, in particular, how human rights considerations factor into the staging of large sporting events.
As a company set up by the Government to perform a range of public functions, a lot of what the Organising Committee for the B2022 games does will be covered by the Human Rights Act 1998. However, beyond this, the Organising Committee has taken steps to understand and comply with the principles that apply to private companies under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (the ‘UNGPs’) – a set of non-binding guidelines for states and companies to prevent, address and remedy human rights breaches and impacts.