this year s blockbuster sequel. the lawsuit asks for unspecified damages, including profits from the new movie, top gun: maverick, which has broken box office records. but paramount says the claims are without merit. earlier we spoke to mitra ahouraian, who s a beverly hills entertainment attorney, in los angeles, who represents actors and often deals with defamation issues. she says the timing of this case is important. certainly, plenty of money to go around that is the perspective that the yonay estate is taking, of course. the us copyright act allows for authors to basically reacquire their rights after 35 years, and they ve sent a notice of termination to paramount so paramount arguably no longer have the license when they sent this notice of termination but the timing is going to be very important in this case because the notice of termination was sent in 2018
fees, and that s because there the copyright act has a cost shifting provision, which is if you have filed your copyright application and somebody accuses you wrongfully of infringing the copyright, you get your legalfees paid by the loser, so this plaintiff actually has a lot to lose. i guess it depends on the outcome of cases like this one to see whether we will see more and more cases like this in the future? i suppose that s true. i think maybe the blurred lines case, where a plaintiff did win on a claim of copyright infringement, it did embolden others to do file their claims. the case of ed sheeran didn t go on the way of the plaintiff, and i think the led zeppelin case also didn t go in the way of the plaintiff, so i think the scale has shifted back to the defence, where it is appropriately placed, given that some of these claims simply have no merit. and how worried do you think are artists now, before they put music out there, that this may happen to them?
In a significant ruling, the Supreme Court has held that Section 63 of the Copyright Act, which penalizes infringement of any copyright, is a cognizable and a non-bailable offence