Two of the three authors of “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” are suing the publisher of Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” for for breach of UK copyright in the UK editions of the book. Today through a series of takeovers Random House is the publisher of both books.
“The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” was published in 1982 and claimed that Jesus did not die on the cross, but married Mary Magdalene and had a child by her.
The legal problem is that an idea for a book is not itself protected, but the actual content of a book is. So its not copyright infringement if two books appear with the same idea as long as they dont directly copy or adapt the earlier text.
So both books are about the same thing – not copyright violation. But what about the architecture of the book? It may be plagiarism but is it copyright violation to describe a similar scene in two different books?