In the eyes of the British legal system, Dan Brown did not systematically rip off Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh while writing The Da Vinci Code. It doesn't get any simpler than this: "The plaintiffs' case has failed. Dan Brown has not infringed copyright. None of this amounts to copying The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail." The Times of London quotes the decision further:

"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. Accordingly there is no copyright infringement either by textual copying or non-textual copying of a substantial part of HBHG by means of copying the central themes."

So now Baigent and Leigh have to cough up more than a million pounds to cover Random House's legal fees, yet Baigent still declares, "By its very nature this case entails a conflict between the spirit and the letter of the law. I think we lost on the letter. We won on the spirit and to that extent we are vindicated." It'll take a whole other book to explain how he figures that. As for HBHG, the Guardian book blogger predicts, "it seems inevitable that over the coming weeks and months the book will sink once again into inevitable and frankly merciful obscurity." (Yep, she said 'inevitable' twice. It's blogging, folks; we work on the fly.) Meanwhile, the HBHG co-author with the sense to stay at home, Henry Lincoln, finally breaks his silence to dismiss Brown's bestselling novel as "a fantasy thriller which has nothing to do with anything." Speaking of Brown, in his personal statement, he notes, "After devoting so much time and energy to this case, I'm eager to get back to writing my new novel." You bet he is! That's why he's putting a fence around his compound, er, house.