I have to admit that I’m still very confused indeed about what is actually alleged here. Dan Brown is said to have taken a lot of The Da Vinci Code from an earlier book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. OK; I get that bit, obviously:
Mr Rayner James told the appeal judges yesterday: “The appellants’
case was that the theme appropriated by the Browns and used in DVC was
a substantial part of the appellants’ copyright work and was thus an
infringement.
“The learned judge, however, considered the case to be about whether the central theme (of HBHG)
was itself a protectable copyright work. This error led the learned
judge into a series of judgments that were wrong in law, and the
learned judge then misapplied the law to his extensive findings of
fact.”
Now the HBHG authors had something of a mountain to climb. To claim that their ideas were copyright they had to show that it was a work of art, didn’t they? But if they were facts, then there could be no copyright. But as they had all along claimed that the book was true, there could be no copyright, except in the actual words themselves, rather than the ideas?
But what really gets me, the bit I really don’t understand, is why they are even trying to claim copyright on those ideas? I thought they were commonplace in the Gnostic Gospels, that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had children?
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