'Da Vinci' Trial: Great For Business
A British court on Tuesday focused on questions about sourcing and underlining as novelist Dan Brown continued defending his blockbuster, "The Da Vinci Code."
The millionaire author was on the stand for the second day, defending his work against a copyright infringement suit brought by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of a 1982 nonfiction book, "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail."
The suit is not against Brown, but his publisher Random House, which also published "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail."
And,
"The Da Vinci Code" is still a bestseller, and "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" has seen sales soar 1,000 percent. Even attendance on a London walking tour of "Code"-related sites has been up.
One walker expressed some cynicism to MacVicar, saying, "The only winner in this is the publishing company. They're the ones going to be selling books like crazy."
Much of Tuesday morning's testimony was taken up with questions about markings and underlinings in Brown's copy of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail."
In the months after the publication of "The Da Vinci Code," which has sold more than 40 million copies, Brown said he had to go back to his research to answer questions posed by readers while on tour.
Among the books he consulted was "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail."
"I am a novelist, not a historian," Brown said. "I needed to go back, so I could defend the work."
Brown, who had published two earlier novels, said he was nearly overwhelmed by response to the religious thriller.
"What happened when 'The Da Vinci Code' came out was totally foreign to me," Brown said.
"When I published 'Angels and Demons' I would go to bookstores and give talks, and there would be five or six people in the audience — and three people were bookstore owners who had taken off their badges so I wouldn't feel bad.
"When 'The Da Vinci Code' came out, I was suddenly talking to 300 or 400 people."
On Monday, Brown said he was shocked at the copyright infringement claim.However, he acknowledged that he could not always recall exact dates of milestones in the creation of his novel. Both books explore theories — dismissed by theologians — that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute but Jesus' wife, the couple had a child and the bloodline survives.
"It's as if you've asked me to go back five years or 10 years and asked me not only what I got for Christmas, but what order I opened the presents," he told Jonathan Rayner James, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
If Baigent and Leigh succeed in securing an injunction to bar the use of their material, they could hold up the scheduled May 19 film release of "The Da Vinci Code," starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou.
Random House lawyers argue the ideas in dispute are so general, copyrights don't protect them.
Copyright attorney David Hooper tended to agree, telling correspondent MacVicar, "When one thinks of people like Shakespeare, they were always using other people's material that they were developing it, they were developing ideas and themes that's what literature is all about."
In his 69-page witness statement released Monday, Brown acknowledged reading Baigent and Leigh's book while he was writing "The Da Vinci Code" — along with 38 other books and more than 300 documents submitted as evidence to the court.
He said Baigent and Leigh's work "was not a crucial or important text in the creation of the framework of 'The Da Vinci Code.'
Brown also said he had fully acknowledged his debt to the two authors by having a character in "The Da Vinci Code" refer to the earlier book. He even named a character Sir Leigh Teabing — an anagram of Baigent and Leigh.
The third author of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail," Henry Lincoln, is not involved in the case. A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Paul Sutton, refused to say why he was not participating. Lincoln, who is in his 70s and reportedly in poor health, could not be reached for comment.