DAN BROWN WINS COPYRIGHT CASE


Reuters (and lots more sources) report that the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail have lost their copyright claim against Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code. More to follow when the judgment becomes available.

STOP PRESS: the BBC website adds:
"The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown did not breach (sic) the copyright of an earlier book, London's High Court has ruled. ... Mr Brown said the verdict "shows that this claim was utterly without merit ... I'm still astonished that these two authors chose to file their suit at all". The ruling clears the way for the Da Vinci Code movie to come out in May.

BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

The Da Vinci Code, author: Dan Brown
Published 2003; global sales: 40m+

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, authors: Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, Henry Lincoln
Published 1982; global sales: 2m+


... 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".
Leonardo da Vinci (right) was not available for comment. Merpel says, now we've finished with Jesus, it's Judas' turn.

The IPKat is quite pleased that this over and that people won't keep asking him who he thinks is going to win.
DAN BROWN WINS COPYRIGHT CASE DAN BROWN WINS COPYRIGHT CASE Reviewed by Anonymous on Friday, April 07, 2006 Rating: 5

2 comments:

  1. It's on the Court Service site http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/HMCSJudgments/View.do?id=4008&index=0&maxIndex=199&searchSimple=&searchSimpleWordType=&searchDateFrom_dd=&searchDateFrom_mm=&searchDateFrom_yyyy=&searchDateTo_dd=&searchDateTo_mm=&searchDateTo_yyyy=&searchCourtId=&searchJudgeId=&ascending=&maxResults=

    The "Central Themes" argument seems to have been roundly rejected, and Michael Baigent's evidence seems to have been the main reason for this. Without the Central Themes, the claimants' case goes nowhere.

    ReplyDelete

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Powered by Blogger.