The resolution was a lot more quiet than the original lawsuit and trial, but the AP reports that Dan Brown won his copyright infringement case Wednesday, after Britain’s Court of Appeal rejected efforts from two authors who claimed he stole their ideas for his blockbuster novel, THE DA VINCI CODE. Lawyers for Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who wrote THE HOLY BLOOD AND THE HOLY GRAIL, now face legal bills of about $6 million after losing their appeal against publisher Random House Inc. This follows Justice Peter Smith‘s April ruling that Random House had not breached the copyright. Smith said the claim was based on a “selective number of facts and ideas artificially taken out of (the book) for the purpose of the litigation.”
“It’s a legal win for Dan Brown, but neither he nor his lawyers come off looking particularly good,” said C.E. Petit of Scrivener’s Error in an email to us this morning. “The main opinion also has a lot of trouble with the trial judge’s structure for his opinion; this appears almost exactly opposed to US practice, in that in US practice the appellate court would probably give more deference to the trial judge’s ability to judge the demeanor of witnesses.”