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'Da Vinci Code' Case Stretched Legal Thinking On What Can Be Protected By Copyright
The common wisdom before, and during, the London copyright infringement trial over Dan Brown's book 'The Da Vinci Code' (DVC) was that the plaintiffs Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh would lose because an idea cannot be copyrighted. And the plaintiffs did lose. Baigent v. Random House Group [2006] EWHC 719 (Ch). Some even suggested the plaintiffs sued only to bolster the sale of their own book, 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' (HBHG), which is what happened ' though High Court Justice Peter Smith ordered the plaintiffs to pay $1.75 million in legal costs. The number of additional copies the authors will have to sell to earn enough royalties to pay that amount is high. Still, the case was one of those signal attempts to reconsider exactly what authorship is for copyright law purposes.
Cribbed Maybe, But Infringed?
That defendant Brown's fiction had been, at the very least, influenced by the plaintiffs 1982 non-fiction book (co-authored by non-plaintiff Henry Lincoln) was admitted by Brown himself. And Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel argued in their book, 'The Da Vinci Hoax,' that it was more than mere influence, that DVC was basically cribbed from HBHG. Both HBHG and DVC proffer that Jesus survived his crucifixion, married Mary Magdalene and had children. The question for the court was, is cribbing of a non-fiction book for a fictional one copyright infringement?
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