Dan Brown’s bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code is possibly nothing more than a skillfully plagiarized version of Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln, and Richard Leigh’s 1982 novel Holy Blood, Holy Grail. That’s bad enough. But even worse is that Holy Blood, Holy Grail itself is possibly nothing more than a skillfully woven tale of fact and fiction published as historical gospel.

The trial that began in London’s High Court yesterday is therefore a legal farce. Because it’s a showdown between fraudsters over ownership of a very lucrative literary hoax, as Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel argue quite persuasively in The Da Vinci Hoax.

The Original “Revelation”

As it happens, I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the mid-1980s, and remember vividly proselytizing its fascinating claims amongst friends. Truth be told, I thought it gave credence to my ingenuous apostasy. I especially relished challenging Christian fundamentalists in my family with “proof” that, although Jesus might have been a saint, celibacy was not one of his virtues. And what better justification can there be for one’s own promiscuity, eh?

Of course, this begs the following observation:

One can appreciate the fear of revealing their holy bloodline throughout the ages. But it beggars belief that heirs to the Son of God would not reveal themselves to evangelical Christians in America, the world’s only superpower. After all, this nation of born-again Christians would surely protect them (against dreaded Catholic assassins) with a religious zeal even the heavily guarded president of the United States would envy.

Brown’s Brilliant Theft

Yet, as fantastical and heretical a story as this is, few people had ever heard of Holy Blood, Holy Grail until Brown cited it in the introduction to his yarn. Brown was smart to acknowledge that The Da Vinci Code traced the trail blazed so quietly by Holy Blood, Holy Grail. There can be no reasonable doubt that the earlier book spawned many such bastard novels.

Brown also deserves credit for cleverly setting his story in modern times and taking his readers on a backwards trail to the place where Holy Blood, Holy Grail began. Mind you, Steven Spielberg should probably sue him for using an Indiana Jones-inspired Harvard professor to move his story.

It has this adventuresome professor trying to solve a murder in the Louvre and uncovering the plot by the Catholic Church to conceal the sexual nature of the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene and the bloodline she established in France.

The Legal Question

The only question facing the High Court is to what degree it is acceptable to “lift the whole architecture” of another person’s research to save the time and effort that independent research would have required to construct one’s own yarn, as the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail allege Brown has done?

I submit that this question must necessarily arise whenever the alleged plagiarizer sells 30 million books and the original author only 30. However, Brown cleverly attributes the original idea for The Da Vinci Code only in part to Holy Blood, Holy Grail. And since novels based on historical scholarship have a hallowed tradition dating back to William Shakespeare, it is a precedent British courts are loath to overturn.

Therefore, as a legal matter, claimants Baigent, Lincoln, and Leigh are bound to lose.

The twist

But here’s the rub: Brown was so cocksure about his “two-year” research that he inserted a “fact page” delineating the “truth” of all of his fairytales. Indeed, it is this page that has induced so many people to buy his book and go on Da Vinci Code pilgrimages to Paris. However, if the judge finds this fact page too contrived (as Olson and Miesel argue in their debunking), he might be moved to rule in favor of the original Holy Blood, Holy Grail storytellers.

Therefore, as an equitable matter, iPINIONS thinks claimants Baigent, Lincoln, and Leigh should win — at least a split, Solomon-like decision.

NOTE: The timing of this lawsuit is very shrewd indeed. The highly anticipated movie based on Brown’s book is scheduled for release in May. And nothing concentrates the minds in Hollywood quite like the prospect of a summer blockbuster. So if the claimants win even a partial victory, they will have considerable leverage to extract tens of millions of dollars in damages from Brown’s publisher Random House, if only to allow the movie to open as planned.

ENDNOTE: There is, nonetheless, an upside to this whole farce for all parties involved. Because, as James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces demonstrated, there’s nothing like controversy to boost sales of a book (or movie). Indeed, even if they lose, Baigent, Lincoln, and Leigh’s Holy Blood, Holy Grail might see their 30 copies in sales increase to 3 million before the dust settles…

Hooray for Hollywood!