A U.S. appeals court has upheld Paramount Pictures’ victory in a copyright dispute over the hit film Top Gun: Maverick, ruling that the movie does not infringe on a journalist’s article that inspired the original 1986 Top Gun.
In a unanimous decision issued Friday, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the sequel’s plot, characters, dialogue, themes, and overall structure are not substantially similar to Top Guns, a 1983 nonfiction article by journalist Ehud Yonay about the Navy’s elite fighter pilot school.
Writing for the panel, U.S. Circuit Judge Eric D. Miller said the similarities cited by Yonay’s family exist only at a broad, conceptual level and do not involve protected creative expression under copyright law. The court concluded that what is original in the article does not appear in the film, while the elements the two works share are factual or too abstract to qualify for protection.
The judges noted that Yonay’s article, while vividly written, is a nonlinear journalistic piece interwoven with historical context and descriptive passages. By contrast, Top Gun: Maverick follows a conventional cinematic structure with a chronological storyline, dramatic buildup, and resolution. The court also emphasized that real-world elements such as fighter jets and the Top Gun training program are not copyrightable.
The ruling affirms a 2023 decision by a federal judge in Los Angeles, who granted Paramount summary judgment and rejected claims that the studio breached a decades-old agreement requiring credit to Yonay. Paramount had originally acquired film rights to Yonay’s article in the early 1980s, but those rights were terminated by his family in 2020, before the sequel was released.
Yonay’s widow and son argued that the 2022 film exploited the original article without permission and failed to provide proper attribution. They also challenged the exclusion of their literary expert’s testimony during trial proceedings. The appeals court found that even if the expert’s analysis had been admitted, it would not have changed the outcome because it did not demonstrate substantial similarity in protected expression.
Paramount welcomed the ruling, saying the court correctly determined that the claims lacked legal merit. Attorneys for Yonay’s family criticized the decision, arguing it weakens copyright protection for nonfiction authors and journalists, and said they are reviewing possible next steps, including further appeals.
The decision marks the latest legal chapter surrounding one of the most successful films of recent years and reinforces long-standing principles that copyright law protects expression, not ideas, facts, or historical subject matter.
