PLEASE READ THESE FACTS FIRST:

  • Random House sued ME; not the other way around.
  • Random House filed suit to silence the facts I was posting on the web.
  • There has been NO trial on the facts, only the Random House effort to prevent a trial.
  • NO expert testimony was allowed despite three international plagiarism experts who were willing to testif that it existed.
  • The only sworn statements made under penalty of perjury are affidavits from me and my experts, nothing from RH.
  • The judge refused to consider any expert analysis.
  • Despite suing me first, Random House & Sony UNsuccessfully demanded that I pay the $310,000 in legal fees they spent to sue me.
  • Contrary to the Random House spin, I am not alleging plagiarism of general issues, but of several hundred very specific ones.
  • This is not about money. Anything I win goes to charity.

Legal filings and the expert witness reports are HERE

I have a second blog, Writopia
which focuses on Dan Brown's pattern of falsehoods
and embellishment of his personal achievements.


Friday, October 21, 2005

Justice in the U.K. (unlike the U.S.)

Regardless of the outcome of this trial, at least the justice system in the United Kingdom has allowed a trial -- unlike the muzzling of my case before a trial could even happen.

This, despite the fact that we have an even stronger case, given the enormous body of substantial and protected similarities that we have not --so far -- been allowed to present in a trial here in the United States.

It looks as if "justice for all" has some meaning over there instead of "justice for big global corporations with deep pockets" as it seems to here.

Brown stole idea for Da Vinci Code, claim authors
By Hugh Davies
(Filed: 21/10/2005)

Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, is to face a High Court action brought by the authors of the 1982 non-fiction book The Holy Blood, and the Holy Grail, who allege that his blockbuster was based on their decade of research.

Speaking ahead of a preliminary hearing of the case next week, Richard Leigh, 62, one of the writers, said: "I don't begrudge Brown his success. I have no particular grievance against him, except for the fact that he wrote a pretty bad novel."

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

Mr Leigh, an American who has lived in England since 1974, and Michael Baigent, 57, a New Zealander, his co-author, are suing Random House, Brown's publishers, for infringement of their ideas.

They are funding the action with the proceeds of their book, which Random House has reissued in a special £20 hardback edition to cash in on the success of Brown's novel.

Henry Lincoln, 75, a Londoner who also co-wrote the book, is ill and has decided to remain out of the action.

A two-week trial is scheduled for the end of February, with both sides assembling formidable legal teams.

Read the rest of the article
By Hugh Davies

9 Comments:

Blogger Mark said...

Spamming upstream. I don't see how you can rip off a nonfiction book on the subject. No citation is needed in fiction. He sure used plenty of it, that's for sure.

Fri Oct 21, 01:33:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Lewis Perdue said...

HBHG does have a point: sure, they used a lot of history, but they INTERPRETED it differently and EXPRESSED the historical issue in proprietary and creative ways that make their work creative and unique.

While I have a helluva lot MORE instances and ways I have been ripped off, there are some very similar infringements in my work ... including (but far from limited to) a new and unique expression of Gnosticism which appears no where else on the planet other than in my work and the DV Code.

So, yes, HBHG could have a solid case ... but not as solid as the one I have but which our "justice" system will not allow to be heard at trial.

Fri Oct 21, 03:14:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Lewis Perdue said...

Deleted the spam ... there's a new word for blog spam: splog.

But there's no new word for the people who do it ... just a lot of old favorites describing posterior body orifices and worse.

Fri Oct 21, 03:17:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Lewis Perdue said...

My law firm pointed out that if this case were being held in Caifornia, I would have been granted a trial because "the substantive law differs" in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as opposed to the Second (NYC) -- which is why Random House had to bring their completely unnecessary law suit there to make sure that INjustice was done.

And because two federal circuit courts of appeals handle copyright infringement so differently is why we have a shot at getting the Supreme Court to look at things.

Fri Oct 21, 03:49:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Mark said...

"including (but far from limited to) a new and unique expression of Gnosticism which appears no where else on the planet other than in my work and the DV Code."

Lew I'm on your side in this, but I have a hard time hanging on to this purcahse on the cliff. I simply can't remember it.

HBHG interpreted history incorrectly according to a review of the facts. The whole Plantard thing was a fraud, and so on. Brown took all of this and carried it through. As far as I know he can do that. I don;t think he can copy the expression of your scenes on the same pages. That points to specific arrangements of facts.

Fri Oct 21, 07:45:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Lewis Perdue said...

"HBHG interpreted history incorrectly according to a review of the facts"

EXACTLY!

You can look at the "incorrect interpretation" as FICTION ... meaning EXPRESSION ... isn't it a coincidence that Brown took those "incorrect interpretations" for DVCode? Not!

Or the mistake over the Codex Leicester in DVCode that was taken from my book, DVLegacy?

Or the interpretations of Gnosticism that I made, which some scholars would say are a mistake because there was NO PREVIOUSLY EXISTING schools of theology as I described.

Sat Oct 22, 09:25:00 AM PDT  
Blogger Mark said...

Well their thesis suite the conclusion he wanted. He copied the idea. The articile even says that Brown "infringed ideas."

Not protected, I'm afraid. What I'm seeing is none of this is protected as expression. That may change, however.

Sat Oct 22, 12:53:00 PM PDT  
Blogger Lewis Perdue said...

Ideas clearly are not protected.

But I know their attorney, Paul Sutton, and he's very intelligent.

Although I am not privy to any confidential details, I'm confident that when the documents are available, the arguments will focus on far more than ideas.

Mon Oct 24, 06:51:00 AM PDT  
Blogger Mark said...

http://scrivenerserror.blogspot.com/2005/10/transparency.html this is appropriate here too.

Sat Oct 29, 12:58:00 PM PDT  

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