The Da Vinci Lawsuit

Some claim there are only 36 plots. Or seven. In any case, the available story stock out there is thin enough that most Hollywood producers ask screenwriters to sign a document acknowledging that their script may be similar to one already in development. Lawsuits over such things are common enough.

But perhaps the biggest lawsuit of its kind is brewing over best-selling botboiler (that everyone, it seems, has read but me), The Da Vinci Code, which is set to be made into a movie, starring Tom Hanks, by Sony Pictures and Columbia Pictures.

To top it all off, Lewis Purdue, the one crying plagiarism, is entertainingly blogging the case at The Da Vinci Crock. Since I haven't read The Da Vinci Code or Perdue's Daughter of Godand The Da Vinci Legacy, I can't say whether his claim has merit. He certainly seems to have timed his lawsuit correctly, just as Sony and Columbia joined the deep pockets of Random House.

The big loser may not be corporations or novelists -- as Bill Poser explains:

Judge George B. Daniels has acceeded to the urgings of the lawyers for both parties to read the three books at issue in their entirety rather than relying on the excerpts in the court filings. I'm sure that I speak for all of us ... in wishing iron-boweled Judge Daniels the best of luck in surviving the ordeal to which he has submitted himself.

RELATED: New York Times article on the secrecy surrounding the production.