Copyright in the Courts: The Da Vinci Code

The background

The case against the publishers of The Da Vinci Code was brought by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, the authors of a non-fiction work, The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, which was first published in 1982. Messrs. Baigent and Leigh claimed that The Da Vinci Code was an infringement of their copyright in their book.

At the center of the dispute was a ‘hypothesis’ presented in The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail concerning the early Christian legend of the holy Grail. (The theme of the quest for the lost Grail - i.e. the cup, or chalice, used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper - was a popular theme in medieval tales of chivalry and has inspired countless writers, film-makers and historians through the ages.) The core of the authors’ hypothesis in The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail was that references to the Grail in early manuscripts were disguised references not to the chalice, but rather to holy blood or Sang real, i.e. to the bloodline of Jesus Christ, and to the belief that this bloodline - through marriage between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene - had continued and merged with the French Merovingian dynasty.

In their book, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh argue that the Holy Roman Church and its successors had sought to suppress this bloodline, but that a powerful secret sect, the Priory of Sion, was formed to protect this "grail." Baigent and Leigh used six known ‘indisputable’ historical facts, or supposed facts, though their conclusion was the result of ‘historical conjecture’ based on those facts. This quasi-historical approach was also the basis of various other published hypotheses as to the merging of Christ’s bloodline with the Merovingian bloodline.

Dan Brown is a popular fiction writer, and his book, The Da Vinci Code, has been the number one best-selling novel in Europe and U.S. for months. The Da Vinci Code is a murder mystery. It opens with the death - in Paris’ Louvre museum - of the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, Jacques Sauniere. Seeking to solve his murder, the heroes of the story are led on a Grail quest, in which they must unravel a series of puzzles based on the history of the Priory of Sion and on the secret behind Christ’s bloodline.

There was no doubt that Dan Brown had drawn on The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail. Indeed, there was a clear and explicit reference to the book in The Da Vinci Code, and...