Dan Brown Didn’t Tell The Truth
In The Holy Blood/Holy Grail Trial
Some of the ideas presented in Michael Baigent’s earlier book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail were copied and incorporated in the best-selling American novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
In March 2006, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh filed suit in a British court against Brown’s publisher, Random House, claiming copyright infringement. On 7 April 2006 High Court judge Peter Smith rejected the claim even though he stated that Dan Brown had been lying in the court. The judge further ruled that Dan Brown and his wife Blythe had copied substantial materials from Holy Blood/Holy Grail but that Baigent and Leigh did not sue properly claiming language and text copying. On 28 March 2007, Baigent and Leigh lost their appeal, and were faced with legal bills of about £3m.
Richard Leigh died on 21 November 2007 in London from causes related to a heart condition worsened by the Dan Brown London lawsuit. Michael Baigent died from a brain hemorrhage in Brighton in 2013. Dan Brown had sued him for the £3m in legal fees from the London trial and won, making Baigent destitute, depressed, sick and then dead.
The London Court Decisions:
Neutral Citation Number: [2007] EWCA Civ 247
Case No: A3 2006/0971
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
CHANCERY DIVISION
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
MR JUSTICE PETER SMITH
[2006] EWHC 719 (Ch)
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
28th March 2007
B e f o r e :
LORD JUSTICE MUMMERY
LORD JUSTICE RIX
and
LORD JUSTICE LLOYD
____________________
Between:
(1) MICHAEL BAIGENT
(2) RICHARD LEIGH
Claimants
Appellants
– and –
THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP LIMITED
Defendant
Respondent
____________________
(Transcript of the Handed Down Judgment of
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LANGUAGE COPYING:
306. “I conclude that, in the main, the majority of the Central Themes were drawn from HBHG in a language sense but it was not the sole source of Blythe Brown’s efforts. She had the other books and they were used for the Synopsis. However, it seems to me clear that when it came to providing the Langdon and Teabing lectures a different pattern emerges. The Teacher, so called in the Synopsis, had no name. When it came to write the rest of the book at a later stage he was given the name Leigh Teabing, which is drawn from HBHG. It is logical, in my view, that having drawn the name from the authors of HBHG, Mr and Mrs Brown would do that at the time when they were writing the lecture parts of the second part of DVC. That is when they introduce HBHG into the list of books and it is in my view when the detail of the language of the Themes is created. I have already observed that in my view Blythe Brown had done significant research using HBHG from some time in 2000. I do not believe Mr Brown used it, as I have said, for the Synopsis, but it was deployed at this later stage when these lectures were written. As the bulk of the material set out in the themes is to be found in HBHG, I can not believe that Blythe Brown would have adopted a scatter gun approach to find these various themes in a series of other books. She used the other books to expand slightly the material which came from HBHG.”
315. In so doing I reject Mr Brown’s evidence that HBHG was acquired later and was not used in any significant way. Blythe Brown’s underlinings (absent any other explanation from her) tell their own story. In my view as I have said this is overwhelmingly supportive of the view that when Mr Brown came to write the second part of DVC the historical context that was then inserted was the Langdon and Teabing lectures. At that time Sophie was linked to Sauniere (he was then given a name). Teabing was similarly created from the anagram of the Claimants and the textual insertions show that they were drawn from HBHG.
316. I regard the suggestion that Mr Brown and Blythe Brown created the Langdon/Teabing lectures from the other sources as completely unsustainable. It flies in the face of logic and the documents as carefully demonstrated by the Claimants in the annex of language similarities set out in their closing submissions. The conclusion is irresistible. Blythe Brown provided the material for the lectures with HBHG in her hands.