Dan Brown can breathe easy; the Da Vinci Code copyright lawsuit is finally over; the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the lower court which dismissed Lewis Perdue's copyright infringement suit.
The justices let stand a lower court ruling that author Lewis Perdue didn't show that The Da Vinci Code, published in 2003, was substantially similar to his 2000 book, Daughter of God.
*****
"Brown took substantial elements of Perdue's novel, appropriated them as his own, and profited greatly from doing so," said Perdue's appeal, which was rejected without comment by the high court in Washington.
Brown's lawyers countered that the novels' "plots, characters, themes and total concept and feel were radically different."
Perdue's suit, seeking $150 million in damages, also named the publisher of Brown's book, Bertelsmann AG's Random House unit, and the producer of the movie, Columbia Pictures, a unit of Tokyo-based Sony Corp.
Perdue claimed that Brown took plot and character details from Daughter of God. He submitted sworn statements from a linguist and a university English professor who cited specific instances of similarity.
A federal judge in New York granted judgment to Brown, saying the only similarities between the books involved historical facts and abstract themes. The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
Let's hope Dan Brown is feeling less stressed these days and more like working on his next book.
