Baigent and Leigh v The Random House Group Ltd (CA)

The claimants in the case were two out of the three authors that wrote The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, a historical conjecture. On the other hand, the defendant in the case was the publisher of Dan Brown’s work titled The Da Vinci Code, a fictions work published by one publishing house, The Random House Group. The Claimants had accused Mr. Brown of having written his novel based on the information contained in their works, which the defendant agreed to. In his defense, the accused claimed that he had referenced some information from the original works of the Claimants, but denied having infringed the copyright ownership (Royal Courts of Justice, 2007). However, the Claimants argued that the accused had copied the central thematic concern of their works, which Justice Peter Smith established as true since the first six chapters of the Da Vinci Code were derived from The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail. He, the judge, found that the Claimants had not created a central theme as they had claimed, which caused the court to refute the claims of copyright rights infringement. 

In its ruling, the court held that the authors had not created a central theme from which Mr. Brown would have copied. Therefore, the case was dismissed, which means that no one received punitive measures from the law. I agree with the court’s decision for two reasons. First, the controversies concerning the life of Jesus Christ, which are central thematic approaches of the two literary works, do not exist only in the Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, but in other historical works that could have inspired The Da Vinci Code. Second, copyrights do not protect ideas in literary works from a direct copying but do not hinder more creative developments of ideas such as Mr. Brown did. 

Reference 

Royal Courts of Justice (2007).  Baigent and Leigh v The Random House Group Ltd (CA) . Retrieved 10 June 2017, from http://www.5rb.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Baigent-v-Random-House-CA-28-Mar-2007.pdf