DA VINCI CODE TRIAL UPDATE:

Dan Brown grilled in Da Vinci Code copyright case
Tue Mar 14, 2006 2:24 PM GMT167

By Mike Collett-White

LONDON (Reuters) - The lawyer representing two historians who accuse Dan Brown of copying their work in his best-seller "The Da Vinci Code" said on Tuesday he suspected the author had lied in his evidence.

The 41-year-old Brown, in the witness box for the second day, was forced to defend his assertion that he had not read "The Holy Blood, and the Holy Grail" when he came up with the idea for his religious thriller.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, co-authors of the 1982 Holy Blood book who are suing Brown's British publisher Random House, say he lifted their ideas wholesale.

Part of Brown's defence has been to say that he had already written the synopsis for The Da Vinci Code, one of the most successful novels ever with sales of around 40 million copies, before he became familiar with the Holy Blood book.

Actually it speaks well for Brown that he originally ignored such a piece of obvious drivel. That said, the sources he did use don't sound all that promising:

When [prosecution lawyer] Rayner James pointed out that the Holy Blood book was referred to as "essential reading" in another work Brown used for his research before writing his synopsis, he replied:

"I had everything I needed for that synopsis. I'm in a synopsis phase. I'm looking at the big picture, not the details."

And, surprisingly, orthography is playing a part in the trial:

The court heard discussions on the difference between British and U.S. punctuation and spelling, as Brown sought to prove documents attributed to his wife were not her work.

Again Blythe emerged as a key partner in Brown's phenomenal success, researching and suggesting plot ideas as he wrote.

There's more on that in this article:

'Da Vinci' documents could hold key

By César G. Soriano, USA TODAY

LONDON — Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown spent a grueling second day on the witness stand here Tuesday, defending his book against charges of copyright infringement. But the person at the heart of the case was not even in court: his wife, Blythe.

[...]

Blythe Brown "is passionate about art and secret history and was enjoying educating herself and being involved in the research," the author wrote in a 69-page witness statement.

Her research has become a primary focus in the suit brought by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, two of the three authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Their attorney, Jonathan Rayner James, grilled Brown about his wife's research methods Tuesday, charging she cobbled together unattributed material from several sources, including Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and used them to create documents that became the synopsis for The Da Vinci Code.

Brown, sounding testy, repeatedly denied that his wife created the documents, noting that one contained British spellings and punctuation.

[...]

I wonder what on earth this is all about. Did the prosecution introduce documents attributed to her that are by somebody else? Someone British? Who? The mystery deepens ...

The case continues, as they say.