Tue, Feb 28, 2006 page7

• `Da Vinci' trial pits history against art

  • THE OBSERVER
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  Nothing less than the future of Western literature is at stake in the High Court in London. Or so the publisher of The Da Vinci Code, the money-spinning blockbuster by Dan Brown, is expected to argue in a ground-breaking trial that started yesterday.

  Brown, whose tale of clerical conspiracy and murder has become the bestselling hardback adult novel of all time, is accused of plundering his plot from a non-fiction work called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

  Historians Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who co-wrote the book with Henry Lincoln, claim that Brown plagiarized "the whole jigsaw puzzle" of their decade's worth of research -- that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a child, founding a bloodline that was protected by the Knights Templar.

  If they win, the historians will seek an injunction preventing further infringement of their copyright.

  In theory, this could bar Random House from publishing Brown's book, which has sold more than 40 million copies, and even threaten the British release of the US$92.5 million film adaptation, starring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou and Sir Ian McKellen.

  However, lawyers representing Random House are expected to argue that the implications would damage the art of writing itself.

  It is believed they would tell the court that for centuries writers have recycled plots, themes and ideas from each other.

  One literary figure has pointed out that apart from A Midsummer Night's Dream, every one of Shakespeare's plays is based on another source.

  Such trading has given rise to the saying, "good writers borrow, great writers steal."

  Brown, now a multi-millionaire who shuns the media spotlight, is expected to be in London to defend his work.

  A Random House source said: "Can you copyright an idea? Previously copyright has applied just to how the idea is used. This is why we are confident. If the claimants win, it's the end of John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Robert Harris, Helen Fielding -- and Shakespeare."

  Random House is expected to point to a series of other books that have also "borrowed" from Baigent and Leigh's work in the 24 years since it was published, none of which was sued.

  The implication is that Brown, like JK Rowling and others, has been targeted because of his multi-millionaire status.

  "Where there's a hit, there's a writ," the source said.

  But Baigent and Leigh, who have hired leading Queen's Counsel Jonathan Rayner James, will argue that Brown has gone further than anyone else in appropriating their research.

  When the writ was issued, Leigh said: "It's not that Dan Brown has lifted certain ideas, because a number of people have done that before. It's rather that he's lifted the whole architecture -- the whole jigsaw puzzle -- and hung it on to the peg of a fictional thriller."

  Lincoln, the third author of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, has declined to explain why he is not joining the legal action, although he is believed to be in ill health. Last year he said The Da Vinci Code had "nothing to do with the facts. It's a potboiler, but a good one."

  In a further twist, Baigent and Leigh's book is also owned by Random House and has sold more than 2 million copies, enjoying a surge since a revised illustrated edition was republished last September.

  Some observers suspect a publicity stunt, but Joel Rickett, deputy editor of the Bookseller, said this was unlikely.

  "From the outside it looks like a long shot, but to get to this stage I'd guess they must have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds and got top legal brains to study it. They must really believe they've got a case," Rickett said.

  "In a sense they're admitting their work has elements of fiction to it. If it was pure history, how could they copyright history? When historians discover something they can't copyright it," he said.

  Rickett added that if the pair won an unlikely victory it would set an astonishing precedent.

  "It would have seismic implications. Novelists would have to be very, very careful when using non-fiction sources to build their fiction. Many novelists read a single work of history and use it as the basis of their book," he said.

  Lisa Jardine, a professor and former Man Booker Prize judge, said: "They are not going to win. I don't think plagiarism any longer holds up -- we live in a world of cut and paste, and in a global village."

  "Creativity is always a beautifully arranged patchwork that nudges something a little further on," Jardine said.
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