Dan Brown acquitted of plagiarism

Verdict has been given in he trial of Dan Brown who had been accused by the authors of the "Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" of stealing the main narrative of their book, published in the early 80s ( Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, they had children and escaped to France where they founded a Royal bloodline), and turning it into the international best-seller "The Da Vinci Code".
The High Court in London acquitted Dan Brown from all accusation of plagiarism.
I'm not a highly qualified Briish High Court Judge, but having read the whole "Holy Blood" series, which I found highly entertaining, but also totally fictitious, and having listened to entire reading of the "Da Vinci Code" on my MP3 player, I couldn't help noticing certain perplexing similarities.
For reasons unknown, they must have escaped the judges.

Good news for Dan Brown, but bad news for the rest of humankind: "After devoting so much time and energy to this case, I'm eager to get back to writing my new novel."

BBC News

Just out of curiosity, isn't plagiarism in fiction works hard to define? Of course Holy Blood Holy Grail isn't really an historical work, but it does purport to be. The Da Vinci Code is acknowledged by its author as a work of fiction (although millions of new-agers apparently missed that memo).

If a fiction writer can be accused of plagiarism in this manner, why not prosecute Coleen McCullough for ripping off both ancient Roman sources and modern secondary sources in her multi-volume fiction series about Marius, Sulla, and Caesar?

-Akolouthos

       Stealing ideas from one person or source is
plagiarsim
        Stealing ideas from many persons or sources
is---"Research"

Originally posted by Zagros The author must be dead more than 25 years before you can use his/her material without permission according to teh copyright convention.

Thanks . I've always kind of wondered about that.

-Akolouthos

Academic plagiarism relates tot he stealing of ideas, so it doesn't matter how it is worded.

The Copyright Convention is universal so regardless of country the same rules apply unless the authorities of a country do not enforce or recognise it.

http://www.unesco.org/culture/laws/copyright/html_eng/page1. shtml

Originally posted by ulrich von hutten was the original as bad as the plagiarism was ? i couldn't understand why the book of brown was a topseller !?

What I heard was that his books didn't sell well to begin with until it got listed in some recommended gift lists.