[smirksirlot]

This. Lawyers and ilk don't understand the amount of interest, persistence and MONEY that fans/fandoms generate for a body of work. Doing this is stupid shortsighted - goodwill is something hard to generate and easily lost. Paramount should have instead gifted that person a giant fan pack and made it a huge PR opportunity.

[IanCal]

I wonder if there's something more complex. If they don't fight this, would they have less recourse if someone uploads the film to youtube?

[vidarh]

No. You need to defend trademarks or you lose them. You don't need to defend copyright.

But even if you had to, it's easily solved: They could have approached him, and said "look, we consider this infringement, and we want to ensure people don't think this is a free for all, but we like it, so why don't you write us a letter asking for permission, and we'll grant you a license as long as you acknowledge that in your twitter feed".

Instead they chose to demonstrate their total lack of understanding of the internet for everyone. It's not like the net is not full of Top Gun torrents to begin with, yet they opt to focus on ruining the marketing opportunity.