The DaVinci Code decision

Lewis Perdue, the plaintiff in the lawsuit alleging plagarism by Dan Brown in The DaVinci Code, dropped by and left a comment in this post on the judge's ruling. News items tend to scroll down quickly on this page and I thought his response was well-written and worth highlighting. Here's an excerpt but his entire response, with links to the judge's ruling and other documents, is worth clicking on the link to read:

Dan Brown won a round, but the case is far from over. The headlines were wrong that the judge has cleared The Da Vinci Code of copyright infringement issues or that the issue has been settled. Contrary to the headlines, Judge Daniels did not "acquit" Brown, but quite to the contrary, acknowledged that there were many similarities in the setting, plot and characters, in other words the key ideas making up my books. However, in one of those interesting quirks of law, he found that Brown's expression of the ideas was different and, therefore, that in the legal meaning of the word he had not plagiarized. We believe the evidence the Judge improperly excluded from consideration proves that my expression was infringed upon, not merely my ideas. There has been no trial on the issues. What occurred exploits a quirk in American copyright infringement law whereby all facts and expert witness testimony can be excluded from consideration. This quirk is the "lay reader" test which says that the judgement relies on the gut-level response of an average reader as to whether similarity exists or not. Ironically, the controversy with Da Vinci Code began with average "lay" readers – strangers who sent me unsolicited emails saying they felt I had been plagiarized. While this is a self-selected population, those who feel I have been plagiarized run approximately 10-to-1 in my favor. This indicates there is a substantial legal question to be addressed. But NONE of those true, average "lay" readers – many of whom were identified in our legal briefs --counted. Only one reader counted in this case: Judge George Daniels who obviously fell into that 1-in-10 category. Because of that, I did not get a trial. Justice demands that a jury hear the evidence.

Dan Brown is free to drop in and respond too.