Da Vinci thumbs his nose.

Dan Brown, author of the bestselling bundle of words called the Da Vinci code, has won his copyright case. It's on Yahoo news here

While I haven't read the book, since I have no time for such popularist drivel, I applaud the decision in this case.

Fiction writers have been concerned that a win for Brown's accusers would mean they would be unable to use reference material in their work.

Scientists, like myself, make extensive use of reference material in everything we publish. If this case had been proven, we would have to seek copyright permission for every single source we quoted. There might be thirty or more in a single scientific paper. Hundreds in a book.

Scientists depend on citations as much as on publication. However, if every citation required written permission, few would ever be named in future work. No matter how important the paper by Bloggs and Bloggs might be, if you don't have the signed form, you can't include it in your reference list. It would make tracking of research through the literature record impossible.

So a quick nose-thumbing is in order at the opportunists who tried to steal this writer's money. If they had won, fiction publication might have been more difficult.

Scientific publication would have been impossible.