Da Vinci Code Not A Copy!
So, the good news for Dan Brown and Random House is that the judge in London’s High Court has ruled that Brown did not breach the copyright of Holy Blood and Holy Grail in his blockbuster The Da Vinci Code. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of the original nonfiction work must now pay Random House 85% of their almost £1.3m court costs.
the judge, Mr Justice Peter Smith, said The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail did not have a central theme.
“It was an artificial creation for the purposes of the litigation working back from the Da Vinci Code,” he ruled.
Dan Brown did use the previous book to write certain parts of his thriller, the judge decided, but did not substantially copy their work.
Mr Brown said he was “still astonished that these two authors chose to file their suit at all”.
A novelist must be free to “draw appropriately” from historical works without facing a court and having his integrity called into question, he said. [“Court reject Da Vinci copy claim” (BBC News)]
Really, this had been such a stupid lawsuit to begin with.
tags: Da Vinci Code, lawsuit, BBC News, Conspiracy Theories, Dan Brown, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, Random House
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on April 7, 2006 at 4:18 pm
RC of strangeculture said:
This has been a really interesting story I’ve enjoyed following. The real conspiracy is how many people benefitted from this lawsuit…I outlined the beneficiaries on my own blog.
–RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com