Two writers face a whopping £3 million ($5.9 million) legal bill after losing a court battle that claimed Dan Brown stole the plot for his bestselling The Da Vinci Code from their book Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
What on earth motivated authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh to sue Brown in the first place is anyone's guess. Not only was their 1982 book a bestseller of its time, but Brown's 2003 novel that suggested Mary Magdalene and Jesus had a child, reignited a huge interest in the subject and no doubt sold a lot more copies of Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
Following their defeat the two authors issued a statement saying:
"We believed, and still do, that non-fiction authors would suffer and be discouraged from extensive research if it was found that any author could take another's ideas, 'morph' and repackage them, then sell them on."