Attack of the Unsuccessful Authors
'Da Vinci Code' Court Case Opens in London
Proving that there's no such thing as success without an accompanying posse of envy, jealousy and downright hostility, the author of The Da Vinci Code is being sued for copyright infringement for the third time! Two previous charges of copyright infringement brought against Dan Brown have been dismissed by a New York Judge, yet apparently Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of the 1982 nonfiction book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail," think the third time might be the charm.
To back up their charge of plagiarism, Baigent and Leigh argue that Brown's wife high-lighted her copy of their book extensively, which should give pause to any grad student feverishly composing his thesis. It's almost to the point where if a successful writer has even dared to read someone else's novel, poem, script, essay, article, what have you, he or she is sure to face a lawsuit screaming "copyright infringement -- MINE MINE MINE!"
Brown has sold 40 million copies of his novel, which is like the sweet whiff of honey to a horde of lesser talented and dung-dining flies. As any hard-working businessman will tell you, the quickest way to find yourself in a lawsuit is to make money -- and maybe in this case, the only way a couple of talentless hacks can make bank is to sue someone who knows how to write, especially when there's a $100 million dollar movie scheduled to come out in the next few months and they're betting the studio will press for a settlement just to make the PR disaster of a lawsuit go away.