In another twist to the publishing phenomenon, it was disclosed yesterday that the judge in the recent plagiarism court case included a coded message in his written judgment.

Contained within certain words, Mr Justice Peter Smith wrote certain letters in bold italic. On first inspection, there seems to be no pattern or reason why the letters are chosen and they could be easily viewed as a typographical errors. But Dan Tench, an observant solicitor at the London-based law firm Olswang, thought otherwise. “We’re not sure yet what it means, but we’re working on it,” he said.

Mr Justice Smith confirmed Mr Tench’s suspicions when he said the pattern was “something more than a typo”. The judge, who is 53 and lists some of his hobbies as reading military history and the sinking of the Titanic, said that paragraph 52 of his judgment would give readers a clue to the puzzle.

That paragraph reads: “I have set out at some length what in my opinion is an overall analysis of HBHG [The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail]. I have done that and will do the same further in this judgment in respect of DVC [The Da Vinci Code] because that is essential in my view to deciding this case.”The paragraph ended: “The key to solving the conundrum posed by this judgment is in reading HBHG and DVC.”

His judgment reached after a three-week High Court hearing last month rejected claims by the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail that Mr Brown stole ideas from their book. Mr Brown has earned an estimated £250 million from the novel which puts forward the theory that the descendants of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene are still alive.

In Mr Justice Smith’s coded judgment, the first nine digits obviously spell Smith Code: s,m,i,t,h,c,o,d,e,J,a,e,i,e,x,t,o,s,t,p,s,a,c,g,r,e,a,m,q,w,f,k,a,d,p,m,q,z.

Beyond that is anyone’s guess.

Mr Brown and his publishers can only be happy to see more publicity for a book that has now sold more than 40 million copies worldwide but spread widespread criticism among theologians.In dismissing the claims by the authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, Mr Justice Smith said that HBHG did not have a “central theme” which was one of their main claims.

“The claimants’ contention that HBHG has very little apart from the central themes is not correct. Even if the central themes were copied they are too general or of too low a level of abstraction to be capable of protection by copyright law.”

He said that the central themes were “merely a selective number of facts and ideas artificially taken out of HBHG for the purpose of litigation”.

The judgment left the pair with a £2 million legal bill and allowed the film version starring Tom Hanks to be released next month.

WHAT THE JUDGE CONCEALED

Concealed in the earlier pages of the 71-page judgment are at least 38 single letters printed in bold italics. One page contains a total of eight single bold italics.

It is not clear whether the page or the paragraph that the italicised letters are hidden in is relevant to breaking the cypher.

The only upper case letter is a “J”. The judgment includes other italicised words, often quoted speech or names of texts, which have not been included in this list.

The most difficult to identify while scanning the text are the letters “c” and “i”, among others. This list is by no means exhaustive.

The first letters on page 5, if they are not an anagram, spell out the words “smith code J”. The judge is Mr Justice Peter Smith. Or maybe the J stands for “Jesus” or “judgment”.

Page 5 s m i t h c o d e J

Page 6 a e i e x

Page 7 t o s t

Page 8 p s a

Page 9 c g r e a

Page 10 m q w f

Page 11 k a

Page 12 d p m q

Page 13 z

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