Word: leigh
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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They were hoping for a miracle, but all they can do now is turn the other cheek. On Wednesday Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, lost their lawsuit against publisher Random House - again - when Britain's Court of Appeal ruled that Dan Brown had not stolen their ideas for his mega-hit cryptic thriller The Da Vinci Code...
...appeal came after last year's High Court ruling, which rejected Baigent and Leigh's claims that Brown had copied major themes from their 1982 non-fiction best-seller, including the theory that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that his descendents are still around today. Back in April, all eyes were on the trial and the ruling was hailed as a victory for the freedom of ideas. It even made a minor celebrity of Justice Peter Smith when he cheekily embedded a coded message into his written decision. This time around, few knew (or cared) that the appeal was even...
...idea. "Everybody is allowed to have ideas, so there's no legal protection for them," says legal commentator Ian Caplin. "But once you express an idea, the law says that copyright can protect that expression." But in this case, both courts agreed that the theories Baigent and Leigh are trying so hard to protect are ideas, not expression. So Brown - and anyone else - is free to use them. Upholding last year's ruling, the appeals court said that the law can't be used to "monopolize historical research or knowledge and prevent the legitimate use of historical and biographical material...
...Like the original High Court judge, the appeal court judges noted that the theories weren't all unique to Baigent and Leigh either. Some of the ideas they say Brown copied from them are based on historical facts and hypotheses that they culled from various other sources...
...curators, critics and collectors who flock to the Venice preview don't generally come in search of Australian artists; in 2005, only one was included (the late Leigh Bowery) in addition to Swallow, Australia's official rep. But come June 7, the art world will do well not to fall over an Australian. Storr has chosen to show Rosemary Laing's panoramic photos of the Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre, a new Mad Max?inspired motorcycle video by Sydney's Shaun Gladwell and, perhaps most intriguingly, Melbourne conceptualist Christian Capurro's Another Misspent Portrait of Etienne de Silhouette...