The Farce is Over

The English judge in charge of the Da Vinci Code copyright trial was nonplussed, "No good reason for not calling Blythe Brown was given. Her evidence could have assisted significantly in explaining how various documents were created and how the text of DVC in respect of the lectures came to be written. Any doubts that could have been explained by her were accordingly to be resolved in favour of the Claimants."

Clearly, he doesn't read the sales figures from Random House. After slowly falling in sales rank over the course of the last year, both books rocketed back into the best sellers' lists.

Did Random House simply engineer the trial concerning Da Vinci Code copyright infringement, timing it so that it would coincide with the movie release? It's hard to see how else the facts can be explained. Indeed, given how the case was run, it would not be at all surprising to discover that Random House fully (and quietly) reimburses the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail for their trial expenses, assuming those authors ever paid such expenses to begin with.

If anyone wishes to argue, one has only to study the judge's ruling. He notes in points 5 and 8 that there were grounds for copyright infringement, but the HBHG authors somehow failed to realize it, as they never mentioned the real grounds for infringement in their suit. He further notes in point 6 that Dan Brown clearly lied about not having made much use of HBHG.

In short, the millionaire authors of HBHG and the expensive lawyer they "hired" were all so bleeding ignorant of their own work and of Dan Brown's work, that they used entirely the wrong approach in the copyright trial - an approach that was doomed to fail.

Further, as the judge notes in point 9, neither the prosecution nor the defense called the one witness - repeatedly referred to during Brown's testimony - who could have cleared things up. The level of incompetence here was mind-boggling.

The whole thing seems to have been a put-up job to sell books and a movie. In essence, Random House was both the defendant and the litigant. They got a month of world-wide publicity in every major news outlet just weeks prior to the launch of a what's sure to be a blockbuster movie. And they got it all simply by paying their in-house lawyers the salaries they have to pay them anyhow.

Brilliant.

As it always has been the marketing associated with the Da Vinci Code is absolutely brilliant.