From Reuters (UK):
Best-selling author Dan Brown was vindicated on Friday in a court battle with two historians who accused him of plagiarising their book in order to write "The Da Vinci Code".
A judge at the High Court in London said that while Brown may have copied bits of the 1982 book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail", that did not amount to a breach of copyright.
"Even if the central themes were copied, they are too general or of too low a level of abstraction to be capable of protection by copyright law," judge Peter Smith told the court.
And:
Random House, owned by German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG, also welcomed the judgement, as did Sony Pictures, which is due to release a Hollywood film based on "The Da Vinci Code".
"We are pleased that justice and common sense have prevailed," Random House's chairman and chief executive Gail Rebuck said in a statement.
Baigent and Leigh were denied leave to appeal and face a legal bill of over 1 million pounds, although an increase in sales of their own book as a result of the publicity surrounding the case may ease the pain.
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