|TOP|The author of The Vatican Boys, Jack Dunn, recently filed a US$400 million (£200 million) lawsuit against Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, claiming that Brown has plagiarised his book.

In the lawsuit, Dunn named Brown; Random House, Brown's publisher; Columbia Pictures; Imagine Entertainment; Sony Releasing; and Sony Pictures, producer of the screen version of the book.

Dunn claimed that extensive portions of his book appear in Brown's book and that there are many similarities in the text, the characters and plot points of The Da Vinci Code that closely parallel the characters and plot points in The Vatican Boys.

Dunn's historical novel was written and copyrighted in 1997, while The Da Vinci Code was released in 2003.

In a press release, Dunn said he had alerted Random House and Sony Pictures April 26 that he "felt there were problems with the content of both books and possible copyright infringement". He received a letter from Random House saying it had received his complaint, but did not get a response from Sony.

In the last five months, Dunn has received "several oral and written credible preliminary reports from literary and/or linguistic experts confirming that substantial similarities in many constituent elements" between the two books are present "and would be readily apparent to reasonable lay readers of both books," according to the lawsuit.

The Vatican Boys is about church corruption and delves into the world of international money, the Opus Dei personal prelature and the Shroud of Turin.

"I thought there were certain problems in Christian organisations in general, and I just wanted to point out exactly what they were. And the reason being is that it's all fixable," said Dunn on why he wrote his book. He spent four years researching and writing the novel, travelling to Europe and Jerusalem.

Dunn told The Catholic Observer, newspaper of the Diocese of Springfield, that the similarities between The Vatican Boys and The Da Vinci Code were first brought to his attention at book signings by readers who noticed that the story in Brown's book looked "an awful lot" like the story in his book. Intrigued, he finally sat down last January to read The Da Vinci Code and immediately saw the connection.

|AD|"I was shocked that someone would so closely copy a book and then try and disguise it by putting in what I call all the fluff around the book, by creating scenes, by just moving characters around a little bit, or changing the scene," said Dunn, who claims there are "virtually hundreds" of similarities between both books.

"If you (take) out everything that he took from my story to get to the bloodline theory, there's nothing left of his book. He needs everything that he took from The Vatican Boys in order to get to the bloodline," including the historical information and characters, Dunn said.

He added: "As a Catholic, as a Christian, I'm very offended by what Dan Brown has done. I'm twice as offended since he used my story to do it.

"I think all of us have the responsibility right now to take very serious(ly) what Dan Brown is doing in promoting this bloodline theory and work together to show other information which refutes his allegations."