Lessons from The Da Vinci Code

On November 13, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the appeal of Lewis Purdue, a California writer who published a novel in 2000 called Daughter of God. In denying Mr. Purdue’s appeal, the Supreme Court effectively ended Mr. Purdue’s copyright infringement case against Dan Brown, the author of the novel The Da Vinci Code. The ruling in Mr. Purdue’s case is just the latest in a string of rulings in three separate copyright infringement cases brought by authors, all of whom allege that Brown used substantial amounts of their respective books in crafting his best selling novel. The three infringement cases do not claim that Brown engaged in word for word copying, but instead, claim that Brown borrowed key elements or themes from the previously published books to such an extent that he infringed on the other authors’ copyrights. Brown and his publisher have denied the allegations in all three cases and have vigorously defended Brown’s work in both the U.S. and British courts.

The question before the courts in each of the three infringement cases is whether and to what extent Brown “borrowed” material from the other authors’ books. Brown readily admits that he reviewed each of the books in question, along with 36 other books and hundreds of documents, in preparation for writing The Da Vinci Code. Brown also admits that his book and the others’ books share similar themes. Brown asserts, however, that what he has done is exactly what every other author does when researching and writing a book. It is not, he says, copyright infringement. To date, the courts have ruled unanimously in Brown’s favor.