Other Crap

'Da Vinci Code' Court Case Opens in London

• The authors of the 1982 nonfiction book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail," are suing publisher Random House, Inc. over the allegation that parts of their work formed the basis of Dan Brown's novel.
• I'm not sure how they could have any case. Many works of fiction are based on some work of (real or alleged) non-fiction. Shakespeare himself based plays on Holinshed's Chronicles and North's translations of Plutarch. As part of his research, Brown took some of their claims and wrote a story based upon them in part. It seems to me that Shakespeare's relationship to Holinshed's Chronicles is precisely the same as Brown's relationship to the litigants' book, and that doesn't sound like copyright infringement to me. It sounds like research.
• The British courts may see it a different way, but to me it sounds like a couple of guys trying to make a fast buck because Brown's book was a financial phenomenon.