HOWZAT

The case attracted hundreds of Dan Brown fans to the neo-Gothic splendour of the High Court last month. Mr Justice Smith retained an air of bluff good humour during sometimes esoteric hearings that touched on the Roman Emperor Constantine’s deathbed conversion to Christianity, the founding of the medieval Knights Templar and the Merovingian dynasty allegedly descended from Christ.

The judge referred to one curious element of the case: that both works were published by the same publishing house. He said: "It is a testament to cynicism in our times that there have been suggestions that this action is nothing more than a collaborative exercise designed to maximise publicity for both books. It is true that the book sales of both books have soared during the course of the trial (in the case of HBHG it is said to be a tenfold increase).

"I am not in a position to comment on whether this cynical view is correct but I would say that if it was such a collaborative exercise, Mr Baigent and Mr Brown both went through an extensive ordeal in cross examination which they are likely to remember for some time."

Brown, who is notoriously publicity-shy, also travelled from his home in New Hampshire to give evidence on behalf of Random House, spending three days on the stand.

While acknowledging that he and his researcher wife, Blythe, read HBHG, he said that they had also used 38 other books and hundreds of documents and HBHG was not a crucial source. He said that his decision to call a key character Sir Leigh Teabing - a partial anagram of the plaintiffs' names - was his nod to their earlier work.

Baigent and Leigh claimed that Brown’s novel contains the same central themes as their book, although under cross-examination Baigent conceded that it had been an exaggeration to say that Brown used "all the same historical conjecture".

The judge said he did not see Brown's use of the anagram as being "anything other than a compliment" to the two authors.

The judge went on: "As is usual with books that attract a lot of publicity, they have attracted the wrath of the literary experts of the world. Fortunately it is not part of my judgment to assess the literary worth of the books or even the truth behind them. I suppose in the world of publication 40 million buyers cannot be wrong."

John Baldwin, QC, for Random House, said that while many of the incidents in The Da Vinci Code had been described before, "no one has put them together, and developed and expressed them, in the way Mr Brown did. That is why he has a bestseller."

Jim Kennedy, spokesman for Sony Pictures Entertainment, said: "While we were not a party to this lawsuit, we are pleased by this result and as we’ve been saying all along we are proceeding with our plans for the release of the film on May 19."

The costs from the case far exceed the amount earned from a sudden surge of sales in their 24-year-old book and even from Baigent's latest bestseller: The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History.

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