All this talk of what Dan Brown's spouse-brarian Blythe Brown knew and when she knew it obsfuscates the real point of the "DaVinci" trial: To sell product. The $1.75 million in legal fees has generated some 406 media postings today alone.

Wire services have dutifully covered the tedious legal grind of the trial. The plaintiffs, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, have throughout exhibited an almost childishly naive sense of how a trial works. Viz, Bloomberg's report about their lawyer, Rayner James, who laments that, under cross examination, Dan Brown offered

"...not a positive defense of identifying from where he obtained this material, but rather the production of a list of possibilities..."

Well, duh. Brown doesn't have to prove anything; that's the job of Baigent and Leigh's testimony. So far, they've failed utterly.

However, while the two historians are likely facing $1.75 millon in legal fees, Reuters notes that the trial has been a boon to both books:

"...the publicity has caused a spike in sales of "Holy Blood." Also set to benefit from the media coverage is the upcoming Hollywood adaptation of "The Da Vinci Code," starring Tom Hanks, due in theaters in May; the release of the U.S. paperback edition of the novel on March 28, and Baigent, whose book "The Jesus Papers" is due out next week."

Honestly, Sony must be praising the Lord right about now. Really, not that a Hanks and Ron Howard pairing represents any kind of a risk, but still: You can't buy this kind of publicity.