Ninth Circuit Nails Shut the Hatch on Top Gun: Maverick Copyright Battle: Paramount Wins Definitive Appeal

By Legal Affairs Correspondent

In a resounding victory for Hollywood studio legal teams and a sobering reminder of the limits of intellectual property law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has officially grounded a high-stakes copyright and contract lawsuit over the blockbuster sequel Top Gun: Maverick.

On Friday, a panel of appellate judges affirmed a lower court’s summary judgment in favor of Paramount Pictures Corporation. The ruling deals a final blow to the legal efforts of Shosh Yonay and Yuval Yonay—the widow and son of late author Ehud Yonay—who sought to claim a slice of the billion-dollar box office spoils generated by the 2022 Tom Cruise vehicle.

The core of the Ninth Circuit’s unanimous decision reinforces a foundational tenet of American copyright jurisprudence: while an author’s unique literary expression is heavily guarded, raw historical facts, real-world events, and generic narrative tropes remain in the public domain, free for anyone to adapt.

Main Facts of the Case

The legal dispute traces its roots back to 1983, a time when the United States Navy Fighter Weapons School—universally known as "Top Gun"—was shrouded in a gritty, high-octane mystique. Ehud Yonay, an investigative journalist and author, captured that subculture in an 11-page article titled “Top Guns,” published in the May 1983 issue of California Magazine.

Yonay’s piece provided readers with an inside look into the intense, high-stakes lives of elite Navy fighter pilots operating out of Miramar, California. Impressed by the piece’s vivid descriptions, Paramount Pictures quickly acquired the exclusive motion picture rights, adapting it into the iconic 1986 action film Top Gun, which catapulted Tom Cruise to superstardom.

Decades later, the entertainment landscape shifted. In 2020, Shosh and Yuval Yonay invoked a provision of the U.S. Copyright Act—specifically 17 U.S.C. § 203(a)(3)—which grants authors or their surviving heirs the statutory right to terminate prior copyright assignments after a specific period. Armed with this termination notice, the Yonays believed they had reclaimed the rights to Ehud Yonay’s underlying journalistic work.

When Paramount released Top Gun: Maverick in May 2022 to critical acclaim and staggering global box office receipts without licensing the article or compensating the family, the Yonays took action. They filed a multi-million-dollar lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, alleging both copyright infringement and breach of contract.

However, the Ninth Circuit’s recent ruling firmly establishes that reclaiming a copyright does not grant a monopoly over the underlying historical facts, real-life personalities, or standard military aviation tropes that inspired the original work in the first place.

Chronology of the Legal Battle

• May 1983: Ehud Yonay publishes his 11-page feature article, “Top Guns,” in California Magazine, chronicling the lives of Navy aviators at the Fighter Weapons School.
• 1983–1986: Paramount Pictures secures the exclusive adaptation rights from Yonay, culminating in the release of the blockbuster original film Top Gun (1986).
• 2020: Citing federal termination rights under 17 U.S.C. § 203, the author’s heirs, Shosh Yonay and Yuval Yonay, terminate Paramount’s original copyright grant.
• May 2022: Paramount releases the long-awaited sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, grossing nearly $1.5 billion worldwide. The studio does not credit or compensate the Yonay family.
• 2022: Shosh and Yuval Yonay file a formal copyright infringement and breach of contract lawsuit against Paramount Pictures in federal court.
• April 2024: The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California grants summary judgment in favor of Paramount, ruling that Maverick shares no substantial protected expression with the 1983 article and dismissing the contract claims.
• January 2026: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit officially affirms the district court’s summary judgment, dismissing the Yonays’ appeal and solidifying Paramount’s legal victory.

Supporting Data and Legal Analysis

To prevail on a claim of copyright infringement, a plaintiff must demonstrate two vital elements: (1) ownership of a valid copyright, and (2) copying of constituent elements of the work that are original. While the Yonays easily cleared the first hurdle by executing their statutory termination rights, they stumbled fundamentally on the second.

The Extrinsic Test and the Fallacy of Abstract Similarities

The Ninth Circuit evaluated the case using the established "extrinsic test," an objective legal standard designed to measure concrete similarities between two works in terms of plot, themes, dialogue, mood, setting, pace, characters, and sequence of events.

The appellate panel agreed entirely with the lower court: the Yonays failed to demonstrate "meaningful similarities" across any of these categories. While the judges acknowledged that Ehud Yonay’s original 1983 article possessed genuine creative flair—noting its "vivid phrasing and innovative structure"—none of that specific literary expression made its way into the script of Top Gun: Maverick.

Instead, the similarities highlighted by the Yonay family existed at such a high level of abstraction that they fell completely outside the scope of copyright protection.

Writing for the panel, the court emphasized a cornerstone of intellectual property law:

"Copyright law… does not protect the facts set forth in a work, so a defendant is not liable for copying them."

The court pointed out that the Top Gun flight school is a real, physical institution operated by the United States Navy, and the pilots and instructors featured in Yonay’s article were real-life historical figures. Facts, by definition, cannot be monopolized by copyright. Furthermore, narrative overlaps—such as pilots landing fighter jets on aircraft carriers or unwinding boisterously in local bars—were categorized by the court as "unprotected facts, familiar stock scenes, or scènes à faire" (incidents, characters, or settings that are indispensable to a given topic).

The "Selection and Arrangement" Theory Fails

Anticipating that direct plot copying would be difficult to prove, the Yonays argued that the selection and arrangement of facts within the article constituted an original protectable design.

Under copyright doctrine, a compilation of otherwise unprotected facts can sometimes receive protection if the author’s unique selection and arrangement display sufficient creativity. However, the Ninth Circuit swiftly dismantled this argument. The court ruled that the structural choices highlighted by the plaintiffs simply boiled down to general historical facts and broad thematic ideas about military aviation training, failing to meet the legal threshold for an original protectable compilation.

The Expert Witness Battle

The appellate court also addressed evidentiary challenges from the lower court proceedings, specifically the handling of expert testimony.

The Ninth Circuit upheld the district court’s decision to exclude the Yonays’ literary expert, Henry Bean. The lower court found that Bean had failed to properly filter out unprotected elements—such as historical facts and military jargon—rendering his ultimate opinions legally "unhelpful and inadmissible."

Conversely, the appellate court saw no issue with the admission of Paramount’s expert witness, Andrew Craig, a former Top Gun instructor. Craig’s testimony was deemed appropriate because it helped the factfinder accurately separate real-world military protocols from the author’s original literary choices.

Breach of Contract and Attribution

Beyond copyright infringement, the lawsuit hinged on a contractual claim tied to the original 1983 option agreement. The agreement stipulated that Paramount was required to provide screen credit and compensation if a film was both "produced by [Paramount] hereunder" and "substantially based upon or adapted from" the article.

Because the Ninth Circuit determined that Top Gun: Maverick did not infringe on the article’s copyright and was not produced using rights derived from the terminated grant, the first contractual condition failed. Given that the contract joined the conditions with the conjunctive word "and," the failure of the first condition meant Paramount had no legal obligation to credit or compensate Ehud Yonay’s estate for the sequel.

Official Responses and Industry Implications

The legal outcome has sent shockwaves through Hollywood and the broader literary-to-screen adaptation pipeline. For studios, production companies, and streaming platforms, the ruling provides vital breathing room when adapting historical events, journalistic profiles, and real-world subcultures.

Legal representatives for Paramount Pictures praised the decision as a decisive validation of creative freedom and the strict boundaries of copyright law. By affirming that studios can build fictional narratives around real-world institutions without remaining perpetually tethered to the authors of historical source material, the ruling prevents a chilling effect on biographical and factual filmmaking.

Conversely, attorneys and advocates for authors’ rights have expressed deep disappointment. Critics of the ruling argue that it undermines the practical utility of federal termination rights under 17 U.S.C. § 203. If original authors and their heirs can reclaim a copyright, they contend, but find themselves legally barred from asserting control over derivative works that naturally flow from their original reporting, the statutory protection risks becoming an empty promise.

Broader Implications for Intellectual Property Law

As Hollywood increasingly looks to journalism, true crime, memoirs, and real-life subcultures for cinematic inspiration, the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in Yonay v. Paramount Pictures serves as a critical signpost for future litigation.

1. The Ironclad Fact-Expression Dichotomy: The decision reinforces that copyright law protects the artistic voice, not the historical record. Authors writing narrative non-fiction must recognize that while their prose is protected, the underlying news breaks, biographical details, and factual settings are public property.
2. The High Bar for Derivative Works: Reclaiming a copyright via statutory termination does not automatically grant heirs a veto over, or a financial stake in, subsequent sequels or reboots if those new projects rely primarily on public domain facts rather than expressive elements of the original work.
3. Drafting Rigorous Adaptation Contracts: For creators and estate planners, the ruling underscores the critical importance of drafting airtight contract language. Relying on outdated or ambiguously phrased clauses regarding future sequels, remakes, and credit obligations can leave heirs legally stranded when multi-decade gaps occur between original releases and blockbuster franchises.

For now, the skies are clear for Top Gun: Maverick, and Paramount Pictures can fly onward without looking over its legal shoulder. But for authors and intellectual property attorneys navigating the delicate boundary between inspiration and infringement, the Ninth Circuit’s message is unmistakable: you can copyright the story you tell, but you can never copyright the facts of the world around you.