News

Israeli writer, Ehud Yonay, authored an article in 1983 which inspired the 1986 movie “Top Gun” starring Tom Cruise. In 2018, the Yonays sent Paramount a statutory notice of termination under the Copyright Act, making them the sole owners of the US copyright for the story in 2020. In doing this, the Yonay’s invoked an aspect of the law that allows artists to reclaim transferred copyrights 35 years later. Upon the release of the new “Top Gun: Maverick” movie just last month, Yonay’s family commenced a lawsuit in California alleging that Paramount’s response to their May cease-and-desist letter was a “total denial of the fact that its 2022 sequel was obviously derivative of” Ehud Yonay’s story. Throughout the lawsuit, Paramount has claimed, however, that the “Top Gun: Maverick” movie had been “sufficiently completed” before the effective termination date of its copyrights. The Yonays are alleging that Paramount infringed on their copyright, in addition to seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The case is Yonay v. Paramount Pictures Corp., 22-cv-03846, US District Court, District of Central California (Los Angeles).

The American rapper Kendrick Lamar recently released a music video entitled “The Heart Part 5”. In the video, Lamar transforms into celebrities, including Will Smith and Kobe Bryant, using deepfakes. Deepfakes employ “deep learning” technology to create fake videos and images of people. However, there are no copyright laws specifically addressing the use of deepfakes. Instead, deepfakes arguably fall under the “fair use” exception to copyright infringement. Accordingly, the celebrities who seemingly appear in the video may not have legal recourse under copyright law.