The Da Vinci Code strikes again

The judgement clearing the author, Dan Brown, from copyright infringement in his successful novel "The Da Vinci Code", has been published with an odd series of italicisations and marked letters. It would seem that weeks of immersion in the thriller's plot has led to the judge coming up with a code of his own.

The case

In a recent High Court ruling 1 in the United Kingdom, Dan Brown's bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, has been found not to be in breach of copyright laws as claimed by the writers of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Richard Leigh and a New Zealand-born claimant, Michael Baigent.

The authors of the Holy Blood, Holy Grail, written in 1982, claimed non-textual infringement in a literary work.  This meant that their case was not based on a claim that a substantial part of their book had been copied; rather they said that Brown copied "a substantial part of the work to produce an altered copy or a colourable imitation".

They argued that their book made a sequence of connections that no one had made before. Among these was that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, that she bore his child, and that the Holy Grail was a metaphor for Mary Magdalene. 

Brown admitted he had looked at Holy Blood, Holy Grail before completing The Da Vinci Code and Justice Smith felt Brown had "genuinely and clearly acknowledged Holy Blood, Holy Grail in The Da Vinci Code". 

To succeed in their claim of non-textual copying, the claimants had to show there was copying of a substantial part of their work to make an altered copy. It was not their facts, themes and ideas that were protected by the law but how those facts, themes and ideas are put together.

This meant the claimants had to show that the structure of the book had been copied. They did this by claiming The Da Vinci Code had taken too much of the central theme of Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

Justice Peter Smith felt however that the claimants failed to make out their central theme. He held that, even if there had been a central theme to Holy Blood, Holy Grail, it was merely an expression of facts and ideas at a very general level and did not warrant protection.

Judge's additional inserts

In the spirit of The Da Vinci Code, Justice Smith put his very own code into his 51-page judgement. The mystery was revealed when lawyers pondering the judgment realised that italics had been placed in strange spots throughout the 51-page document. The judgment has a mixture of bold and italicized font scrambled amongst his findings.

The message embedded in the ruling reads 'Smithy Code Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought' and is a reference to an event from about 100 years ago. The encryption scheme was based on the Fibonacci number sequence, the same one used in the Dan Smith novel.

1 Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh v The Random House Group Limited [2006] EWHC 719 (Ch)

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