Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Da Vinci Code is Not the Holy Grail

Dan Brown
Dan Brown believes authors should be free to draw from historical sources
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 huge legal fees.

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

The Da Vinci Code, published in 2003, has sold more than 40m copies.

Baigent and Leigh's book, which was published in 1982, has sold some two million copies and was a best-seller when it was first released. The co-authors said they were disappointed by the Appellate Court ruling.
"We believed, and still do, that non-fiction authors would suffer and be discouraged from extensive research if it was found that any author could take another's ideas, 'morph' and repackage them, then sell them on," they said.

Both books explore the idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child together, and their bloodline still exists... The movie was boring and a bigger disappointment than the court decision. Legal pub opens the matter up for discussion.

4 comments:

Ms Calabaza said...

Legal Pub,
I bow to your legal expertise as I am not a legal scholar. However, I did read HBHG when in came out and was interested in its premise even though it was debunked many times over after the initial publication. I have to believe there is a very good possibility that Dan Brown's original concept for his "novel" was HBHG but that would not make it plagiarism, would it? Otherwise, no one would be able to write a fiction based on non-fiction facts? No?

Ms Calabaza said...

Legal Pub,
I bow to your legal expertise as I am not a legal scholar. However, I did read HBHG when in came out and was interested in its premise even though it was debunked many times over after the initial publication. I have to believe there is a very good possibility that Dan Brown's original concept for his "novel" was HBHG but that would not make it plagiarism, would it? Otherwise, no one would be able to write a fiction based on non-fiction facts? No?

Ron said...

I did see the movie and it was very boring. This story is not that interesting, either.

Anonymous said...

Iron Mike:

Hey guys and gals, I say it aint plagerism. Just because I got an idea for a book off the wall of a public John doesn't mean that I plagerized. Plagerism is what the football players do when they copy book reports of others and turn em in as their own!

Iron Mike