Britain's Court of Appeal rejected Michael Baignet and Richard Leigh's suit against "The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown's publisher. Baignet and Leigh claimed Brown stole their ideas from their 1982 nonfiction book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail." Brown claims he studied the book when writing his novel, however, he did not copy from it. The court said copyright protection does not extend to facts, theories, and themes.

ABC News reports:

The character of Leigh Teabing is an anagram of Leigh and Baigent, Rix noted, and at one point Teabing refers to "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" as "perh  More ...