LONDON – Lawyers agreed Wednesday on a timetable for an appeal by two authors who failed to persuade a lower court that Dan Brown stole their ideas for his blockbuster novel, "The Da Vinci Code."
A date has not been set for the hearing, but the parties agreed that the appellate justices would be given two days to read and prepare, followed by three days for arguments.
In April, Justice Peter Smith ruled that Random House, the book's publisher, had not breached the copyright of another best seller, "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail."
The authors of that work, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, claimed that Brown took his central theme from their book. Both books deal with a theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married, had a child and the bloodline continues to this day.
Baigent and Leigh have been ordered to pay 85 percent of Random House's legal bill, estimated at $2.5 million. They also are responsible for paying their own lawyers.
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