They Sit in the Fish Bowl so You Don't Have to. Reuters reports that "Final chapter looms in 'Da Vinci' copying case." From the article: "'In this case, Brown has used HBHG with the intention of appropriating the work of its authors,' Rayner James said. 'He and/or Blythe has intentionally used HBHG in order to save the time and effort that independent research would have required.'" Of course, historians do this to each other all the time. If you're claiming that your work is historical fact, can you really complain if some of the same facts end up in other works.