Da Vinci Code Appeal Dismissed

28 March 2007 saw the Court of Appeal confirm that Dan Brown’s code and conspiracy thriller ‘The Da Vinci Code’ did not infringe copyright in a book that was used as research for his novel. The claim had been brought by two of the authors of ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’, a 1982 work described by them as historical conjecture on the idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child together and that their bloodline continues today.

Da Vinci was the latest in a spate of recent cases addressing the thorny issue of non-classic copyright infringement. This is not the traditional copying of for example, written language, code or graphics but the more nebulous idea of taking of a theme, format or structure, often described as the "look and feel" of the copyright work. Whilst copyright does not protect an idea, it can