Chris Nicholson's Writing Weblog
March 08, 2006 • Wednesday
Dan Brown, author of the bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, is attending a London Court hearing this week to defend himself against a copyright infringement case.
The plaintiffs, Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent, are arguing that Brown stole the idea for The Da Vinci Code from their 1982 book The Holy Blood, and the Holy Grail.
My guess is that Leigh and Baigent are trying to get either money or publicity. As professional writers, they should be well aware that copyright laws protect specific expressions of ideas, not the ideas themselves.
For instance, there's nothing illegal about someone writing another book about an obsessed sea captain hunting a white whale. England is a signed party of the Berne Convention, which essentially standardizes copyright law throughout most of the civilized world.
For more information on Brown's court case, there's a good article in the Christian Science Monitor.
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