What the DaVinci Code Ruling Means For YOU

A judge ruled Friday, April 7, 2006, that mega-selling author Dan Brown did not steal ideas for The Da Vinci Code from a non-fiction work, ending the suspense about the case with an ultimately unsurprising decision.
High Court Judge Peter Smith rejected a copyright-infringement claim by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, who claimed that Brown's blockbuster "appropriated the architecture" of their 1982 book.
Actually the ruling was never in doubt, because what the plaintiffs were arguing has virtually nothing to do with copyright.
"There is no copyright in ideas," said Mark Stephens, a lawyer specializing in media law and copyright issues. "It's just about how words are expressed." "If the verdict were in favour of the plaintiffs, the judge (would) have rewritten the law of copyright."
As I ‘ve said time and time again, you cannot copyright an idea. They’re worth even less than a dime a dozen. Ideas are free for everybody. Anyone can use them and re-use them. If someone tells you the idea for a story and you decide to use that idea, you might be a soundrel, but you certainly haven’t done anything illegal.
So what IS copyright when it comes to books?
Copyright applies to the ‘expression’ of that idea… the way the words are put down on paper to explain that idea. The author owns that. And you can’t use it without permission. If I write a booklet, book, play, essay, (or even this article) and you reproduce it word for word and say it’s yours, that’s illegal. It violates copyright law in dozens of countries around the world.
But if you take the idea of that booklet, book, play, essay (or even this article) and re-write it in your own words, no problem. And it works for both fiction and non-fiction.
If I write a book about how to build a picnic table, you’re free to re-write the book, using your own writing style but the same information, and that new book is absolutely yours, without worry about copyright.
For fiction, a plot is just a fancy name for an idea, or a series of ideas. You can take the same plot, dress it up in different clothes, and you’ve got a new book with a winning story line.
The movie Alien was pitched by saying, “It’s Jaws, in space!”
This whole DaVinci trial thing has had writers guessing and second guessing themselves for months. They were afraid that any idea they had consciously or unconsciously derived from another source might run afoul of the law.
The truth is, that’s just not the case.
So where does that leave you? Start writing. There are loads of ideas out there just waiting for you to place your unique hands on them. Re-write one. Make it take place in ancient history, or in the future, or on a distant island. Take two ideas and put them together to form something still more noteworthy.
Leave the doubt aside and make it happen!