Today the Judge for the copyright infringement case against Dan Brown and his book “The Da Vinci Code” is supposed to give his ruling today. If the verdict goes indeed go against Brown, then not only will it cost the man a TON of money… but it also has the possibility of holding up the release of the Da Vinci Code movie.
There is a lot of grey in this whole thing. If Brown and his publishers win… everything goes on as planned and it’s business as usual. The the authors of “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” win, then it could be an entirely different story. Or not. It’s unclear as to what the full legal ramifications will be.
We’ll just have to sit and wait for the verdict, and then see how the house of cards starts to fall.
***UPDATE***
The decision came in. The court found in favor of the defendant Dan Brown and his publishing company
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Week recap: Wii, PS3 restock, Xbox 360 hot deals..
Microsoft and Peter Jackson postpone the making of a film based on the Halo video game after backers pull out…
Microsoft and Peter Jackson postpone the making of a film based on the Halo video game after backers pull out…
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Der Da Vinci Code ist eine gute UCHRONIE.
Diese Uchronie ist nicht unwahrscheinlicher als die Fabeln der Kirche.
Die “Templiers” sind nicht wegen Blasphemie von Philippe Le Bel und vom Papst erledigt worden.
Sie waren einfach zu mächtig und zu reich für die Karolinger geworden.
Den “Templiers” das Geheimnis der Tochter Jesus: Sarah anh√§ngen zu wollen,
ist eine schöne kontrafaktische Geschichte.
Warum sollten wir aber nicht daran glauben ?
Müssen wir den eidesstaatlichen Versicherungen vom Opus Dei und ihrer Benedikten glauben ?
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Of course the real winner here is the publishing company, which handles both Brown AND Baigent/Leigh…
To bad Brown wasn’t born during the 16th century. He would have gotten the same fate as Giordano Bruno. Bruno was put in prison for a long time, paraded naked around the town square, and burned alive by the church. Ya’ll know what was his crime? Bruno believed our planet earth revolved around the sun and not the other way. Unlike our good old greedy and slimy Dan Brown, Giordano didn’t have money and influence to get out of his trouble. How’s that for justice.
I just quickly scanned the acknowledgments section at the beginning of “The Da Vinci Code” and saw no reference to “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” (which doesn’t really answer your question). Brown thanks several others for research assistance.
I just read this entry from Wikipedia (note the annotation!):
In February 2006, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, two of the three authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, took the UK publisher of The DaVinci Code to court for breach of copyright, alleging plagiarism. Some sources suggested the lawsuit was a publicity stunt intended to boost sales of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which did in fact occur. Court costs of over 1 million pounds outweighed or at least substantially reduced the financial benefit of the lawsuit.
Dan Brown repeatedly said in his defence that history cannot be plagiarised and therefore the accusations of the two authors were false. Leigh stated, “It’s not that Dan Brown has lifted certain ideas because a number of people have done that before. It’s rather that he’s lifted the whole architecture – the whole jigsaw puzzle – and hung it on to the peg of a fictional thriller.” Dan Brown has admitted some of the ideas taken from Baigent and Leigh’s work were indispensable to the book, but stated that there were many other sources also behind it. However he stated that neither he nor his wife had read Baigent and Leigh’s book when he produced his “synopsis” of the novel.
To Mr Stay
You might be right in saying that Brown tried to pass this as his own theory, I’m not sure about that, but as far as I can remember while I was reading it, I think there was some references about books on the subject in the story.
Didn’t the “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” book was mentionned in the novel? As for my comment about plagiarizing the bible, of course, it was a little sarcastic since, as an informational book, they had to quote the bible properly…But one must realize that you can’t really put quotes every two lines in a novel. They use some character and make him say what normally would be quoted…
I never really thought myself that Brown tried to pass the theory as his…I had heard myself the theory a long time ago before Brown had even thought about writing his book I’m sure…Just think of the movie “The last temptation of christ” which was showing a Jesus who hadn’t died on the cross!
Anyway, I agree that if Brown would have went and written a book about the same subject but, it wouldn’t be a novel, it would be closer to plagiarizing… But then, it always depends on how you write it and what new facts you bring… Look at all the books which talks about Black holes as an example, does that mean that some authors are plagiarizing others? They do talk about similar things…and parts of the info might be exactly the same…but, if there are some new elements and that you can’t really recognize the sentences, it would be difficult to pretend its plagiarizing…
Follow-up: This situation reminds me of steroids in basebal. Before 2002 there was no rule against it, so it was not officially cheating. But there is something inherently unethical.
You are right and the court agrees with you. You can’t copyright an idea.
I suppose I have a problem with Brown passing off this nonmainstream theory as his own (which I still think he did in order to sell books)by not acknowledging the research of the other authors.
The authors didn’t plagiarize the Bible (if that’s possible). Everything they wrote was properly annotated.
By the way, the lawsuit has increased sales of “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”. And the authors new book has a huge first printing.
I’m so glad. Using a theory as a concept for a novel isn’t plagiarizing it IMHO. Brown created a story around some elements taken from the “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” book. Let’s imagine what would have happened if Brown would have lost. It would mean that any authors who would like to use a known theory (scientific or other) couldn’t, or would have to pay some rights or things like that. Good bye Science-fiction and other books of the same kind who would use all kind of scientific theories to try to create a story. It would make the job of novelists almost impossible.
“Hey, let’s make a historical novel and in it, Napoleon would slowly die because he is being poisoned by someone!!” “Hmmm…no…that’s someone’s theory, can’t use it!”…”Okay then, let’s write a science-fiction book where humans would go colonize other planets of our solar system!!” “Hmmm…no…since we will be talking about the fact that the planets are rotating around the sun…that’s someone’s theory, can’t use it!”
And as for the authors of the book, they did plagiarized their book on the bible and lots of other books…Does that count? I know it must be frustrating for them to see that Brown made a lot more money than them for the same informations but hey, that’s life! He made it more interesting!!
A victory for plagiarists. I read both and the authors had a good case against Brown.
Did you doubt anything different, just look at the money that is at stake
A great day for free speech, but a dark day for literature…