Da Vinci Code appeal is dismissed

[CFLarsen]

Da Vinci Code appeal is dismissed

The Court of Appeal in London has ruled that Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, did not reproduce ideas from an earlier work in his best-selling novel.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who claimed that themes from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail were plagiarised by Brown, now face a legal bill of £3m.

The High Court in London ruled in April 2006 that US writer Brown had not copied the work of the two authors.

Duh.

They could only win if they were to admit that their book was fiction. But they don't do that - they claim it is real history.

Dan Brown can take any historian's account of any event and write as many works of fiction as he pleases. Regardless of how sloppy the historians are.

 

[CurtC]

The online magazine Slate published an excellent article on this case a year ago, making a strong case for why it should be decided the way it eventually was:

Holy Grail Wars

This reasoning against protecting truth claims is reflected in American copyright law. In this respect, the suggestion, from the Weekly Standard's Christopher Caldwell (a sometime Slate writer), that the Da Vinci lawsuit is an unprecedented effort to expand copyright is slightly misleading. There have been American cases just like Da Vinci, but the point is that they're all losers. For example, Universal once made a film, The Hindenburg, premised on the wacky idea that an idealistic crewman put a bomb on the Hindenburg and blew it up. That theory was taken directly from A.A. Hoehling's Who Destroyed the Hindenburg? (1962). And in the 1980s, CBS produced a Simon & Simon episode premised on the idea that the gangster John Dillinger, killed by the FBI in 1934, had actually faked his own death. This wasn't the series writers' idea—it was the published theory of one Jay Robert Nash, author of Dillinger: Dead or Alive?

Each of these plaintiffs lost. The judges said what I've said: If the author calls it a fact, you can steal it. The first person to publish a historical theory, again in the words of Judge Frank Easterbrook, "does not get dibs on history." That's logic that the English courts would be well-disposed to follow.

 

[Ripley Twenty-Nine]

The online magazine Slate published an excellent article on this case a year ago, making a strong case for why it should be decided the way it eventually was:

Holy Grail Wars

It makes for an interesting conundrum for authors trying to pass off fiction as real 'history'.

I would imagine that in the future, we will see these types of books published with a disclaimer saying that many facts in the book are works of fiction, but follow it up with a nudge and a wink.

The same way unfortunately that psychics get away with what they do. 'Our readings are for entertainment purposes only! *Nudge, nudge, wink, wink*

But hey, the harder it is for these authors to blatently lie to the public to sell more copies of their book, the better.

 

[boloboffin]

I'd like to see if the publicity helped sales of the Baigent/Leigh book. Personally, I think the lawsuit was more about claiming credit for the idea rather than getting the cash (although I'm sure they would have taken the cash), although any cash and credit should really go to the perps of the original fraud, shouldn't it?