"THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL." The details are nearly all wrong, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter in this case. The London Times has an informative article:

Da Vinci judge turns back to page one
By Alan Hamilton

The devil is in the detail, and one reading of the two hefty books in question proves insufficient

DID Pepin the Fat assassinate King Dagobert II in AD679? Why did the Knights Templar fall out with the Priory of Sion in 1188? And was the Crucifixion a fake?

Early Christian history dominated the second day yesterday of the hearing in the High Court into whether the American author Dan Brown had infringed copyright by lifting ideas from a book published more than 20 years previously for his blockbusting fiction, The Da Vinci Code, written in 2003.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh are suing their publishers, Random House, for breach of copyright, saying that Brown took at least 15 core ideas from their non-fiction work, The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, written in 1982. It was the turn of the defence yesterday to deny the claims and, as ever, the devil was in the detail.

[...]

My favorite bit was this:

At this stage Mr Justice Peter Smith interjected from the bench. “It’s not surprising, given what happened in 1187.” The court was briefly silenced. “The loss of the kingdom of Jerusalem, thanks to their stupid master,” the judge explained. Knowing nods all round.

Right. 1187. Of course. This judge seems to be the right man for the job.

(Heads up, Grant Macaskill.)

UPDATE: Also in the Times, Magnus Linklater sums up the situation nicely:

This then must be the dilemma for those who seek to defend their own versions of made-up history: they can only sue and win if they can demonstrate that their ideas are fictional, invented and therefore entirely their own property. If, on the other hand, they succeed in proving that their research is genuine, and their investigations firmly based, then they have made a signal contribution to history — a history that belongs to us all. Their revelations become as public as the secrets of the Enigma Code, the Suez pact, or the British presidency of the European Union.

Read it all.