UK- Random House, publisher of Dan Brown’s best-selling novel The Da Vinci code, was cleared at the High Court in London on Friday of infringing copyright rules after a high profile case in which two rival authors claimed their ideas had been stolen.

Judge Peter Smith, giving his verdict, said “The plaintiffs’ case has failed. Dan Brown has not infringed copyright. None of this amounts to copying The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.”

But the Judge did say that the claimants, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, had established that their book was possessed by Mr Brown and his researcher wife far earlier than the author stated in his evidence. However, he added “I do not believe that those failures of Mr Brown’s evidence conclude that I must reject everything he said.”

Welcoming the ruling, Dan Brown said: “Today’s verdict shows that this claim was utterly without merit. A novelist must be free to draw appropriately from historical works without fear that he’ll be sued”

The case had potentially far-reaching implications for writers and publishers and Friday’s ruling will no doubt be met with wide-spread relief in the book trade. The High Court decision ends the threat that the lawsuit would delay the release of the film version of “The Da Vinci Code,” which is due to open worldwide on May 19.

Lawyers said that legal cases which involve claims of stolen ideas rather than more direct forms of copying were always likely to face an uphill battle in the courts.

Mr Baigent and Mr Leigh claimed that the American author’s thriller appropriated major themes and ideas that they – along with a third individual – explored in their 1980s book – The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. The non-fiction work looked at the possibility that Jesus had been married to Mary Magdalene; that she fled to France; and that their offspring established a bloodline there.

Dan Brown’s work deals with the efforts of a Harvard professor to solve the murder of a curator at the Louvre museum in Paris. This, in turn, leads to claims that the Catholic Church has been involved in a plot to conceal the true story about Jesus, and the bloodline established with Mary Magdalene.

Mr Brown spent three days in the High Court witness-box during the trial, defending his fictional thriller as he was quizzed about the research material which he and his wife, Blythe, gathered. The authors of The Holy Blood, maintained that Mr Brown must have referred to their book before he wrote the synopsis for his novel in early-2001. Mr Brown maintained he used other source material at that stage and only read parts of their book much later.