'Da Vinci' author cleared in suit

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A British court yesterday cleared "The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown of copying the work of two others - who share the same publisher as him - as the judge slammed the copyright suit as "utterly without merit."

The judge accused authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh of resorting to fiction in their lawsuit, in which they claimed the best-selling Brown had copied parts of their 1982 nonfiction book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail."

Baigent and Leigh had sued Random House, claiming the novel "appropriated the architecture" of their nonfiction book, in particular the theory that Jesus married Mary Magdalene.