11.14.2006

Da Vinci Ruling

The US Supreme Court has thrown out the lawsuit of Lewis Perdue against Dan Brown and Random House. Perdue claims that Brown plagerized parts of his novel, Daughter of God, in order to create what became Brown's biggest bestseller, The Da Vinci Code.
This is Brown's second plagarism case -- earlier this year, British courts absolved Dan Brown of plagarism charges, suggesting he lifted from The Blood and The Holy Grail by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. Perdue should consider himself lucky that his case was simply thrown out and he didn't have to pay Random House's legal fees. In Britain, the claiments were ordered to pay 85% of Random House's legal fees.

1 comment:

Lewis Perdue said...

The Supreme Court didn't address the substance of my case at all -- it's just that they didn't want to deal with a messy inconsistency concerning federal adjudication of copyright infringement.

Thanks to that, justice in this sort of issue still depends on shopping for the right Federal Court to hear the case.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court makes mistakes all the time. Hell, it took them over half a century to correct Plessey v. Ferguson.

One part of me is a little disappointed, but overall I am relieved to have this part of things over.

Not having to pay Random House's $300,000+ legal fee demand was the most important issue and having Seth Mnookin and his Vanity Fair article set straight the Random House spin machine pretty well established the point I had tried to make before RH sued me.

As my appellate attorney Luther Munford just said to me in an email, "I believe the petition makes it clear to anyone who cares about such things that Dan Brown and his wife certainly did copy Daughter of God in a substantial way."