User:Lperdue/DraftBio

Lewis Perdue has written 20 published books, is a successful entrepreneur and has been a member of the faculties at UCLA and Cornell University. He has been an investigatve reporter, Washington correspondent for major newspaper chains and is currently the founder and editor of Wine Industry Insight.

From 2003 until 2006, Perdue was embroiled in a controversy (and later a lawsuit) with Random House over his online allegations that Dan Brown's 2003 thriller,  The Da Vinci Code had plagiarized two of Perdue's books, The Da Vinci Legacy (1983) and Daughter of God (2000).

Random House won the copyright infringement portion of their lawsuit, but lost their demand to have Perdue pay them more than $300,000 they spent on legal fees.

Author
Perdue had his first book published in 1974 and has continued to write both fiction (thrillers) and non-fiction. Several of Perdue's have become bestsellers

Thrillers

 * Perfect Killer ISBN 978-0765340672
 * Daughter of God ISBN 978-0812589719
 * Zaibatsu ISBN 0373970854
 * SlateWiper ISBN 978-0765340665
 * The Linz Testament ISBN 978-1558171176
 * The DaVinci Legacy (2004) ISBN 978-0765349675
 * The DaVinci Legacy (1983) ISBN 0523417624
 * The Telsa Bequest ISBN 978-0523420271
 * The Delphi Betrayal ISBN 978-0523417288
 * Queens Gate Reckoning ISBN 0523414366
 * The Trinity Implosion ISBN 0532221176
 * .357 Vigilant Series (three books, co-authored with Lee Goldberg and writing as Ian Ludlow). ISBN 0523422504, ISBN 0523422512, ISBN 0523422520

Non-Fiction

 * The Wrath of Grapes ISBN 978-0380801510
 * The French Paradox and Beyond ISBN 978-0962527111
 * High-Technology Editorial Stylebook ISBN 1556235313
 * Supercharging Your PC ISBN 0078810000
 * EroticaBiz: How Sex Shaped the Internet ISBN 978-0595256129
 * The Country Inns of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia ISBN 0915168065
 * The Washington Connection (with Robin Moore) ISBN 0895160048

The Da Vinci Code Controversy
The controversy began in June 2003 when Perdue contacted Random House with a brief list of what he considered similarities. After getting no response, took his allegations to the Internet.

Random House did respond with a faxed response that disputed any similarities and warned Perdue not to sue them for plagiarism.

Perdue continued to press his allegations on the web, finally posting the entire text of a report by forensic linguist John Olsson, head of the Forensic Linguistics Institute in the U.K.

Olsson's report, A forensic account of the striking infringements Of protectible material By Daniel Brown in his Da Vinci Code Of Lewis Perdue's Daughter of God (and related works), July 2006 concluded that Brown had plagiarized Perdue. Olsson did not ask for payment for his work.

On Sept. 17, 2004, Random House filed suit against Perdue, in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Random House's lawsuit was for declaratory judgment, demanding that the court declare The Da Vinci Code did not plagiarize Perdue's works. The lawsuit also demanded that Perdue repay the legal costs of Random House's legal action.

In order to avoid an automatic default of the Random House lawsuit, Perdue countersued.

Perdue lost the copyright infringement portion of the lawsuit because the District Court judge said "A reasonable average lay observer would not conclude that The Da Vinci Code is substantially similar to Daughter of God."

Perdue's counterclaim had presented substantial evidence that average lay readers had, in fact, found similarities. In rendering this decision, the judge, denied a requested jury trial and refused to allow the introduction expert testimony from Olsson and others.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the District Court's decision. Their opinion said the judge had appropriately relied on his own feelings and had correctly excluded the expert testimony and jury trial.

As Perdue's brief in his request for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court showed, the exclusion of expert witness testimony in copyright infringement cases is not uniform across the United States. Indeed, other federal court districts not only allow such evidence, but usually require a case and expert testimony to be considered by a jury if requested.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Perdue's appeal.

Random House did lose their effort to force Perdue to pay more than $300,000 in legal fees they spent to sue him. The District Court decision refused to award the fees because he said "...Perdue's claim was not objectively unreasonable, and there was no evidence that Perdue pursued his claims with an improper motive and/or in bad faith."

Daniels' decision not to grant Random House their legal fees was based on a lengthier and more detailed decision by a federal magistrate judge a who had been given the task of determining if the facts of the situation warranted the payment of fees by Perdue.

Various news accounts of the legal battle have circulated since the case. However, an extensive article by Seth Mnookin journalist, author and former Newsweek reporter in Vanity Fair remains only major piece published about the controversy.

Educator
Lewis Perdue has been a member of the faculties at UCLA (1979-1983) and Cornell University (1973-74) where he taught writing and journalism.

While on the UCLA faculty, he was also the advisor to the UCLA Daily Bruin and also served part-time as the editorial page editor for the Santa Monica Evening Outlook.

Perdue has continued his teaching by guest lecturing at local colleges, universities and high schools all in a volunteer capacity.

In addition, he has created two free websites that offer users the ability to identify then correct the most common and serious writing mistakes. Those sites are Style Duck and One-Minute Editor.

Entrepreneur
Lew has founded, co-founded, or been a consultant in the early stages of a number of companies including:


 * Wines West, a Los Angeles-based wine importer, wholesaler distributor.
 * Renaissance Communications, a Silicon Valley technology consulting company.
 * Pocketpass, an Internet micropayment and rights management system.
 * LynuxWorks, a real-time Linux and Posix-Compliant operating system.
 * Kalpana, the first network Etherswitch.
 * Wine Industry Insight.

Journalist
As a journalist, Perdue has worked either full-time, as a regular columnist or as a regular freelancer to a wide variety of news organizations including: Barron's Weekly, Wall Street Journal Online, The Street.Com, Gannett News Service, Dow Jones/Ottaway Newspapers, Jack Anderson, The Washington Post.

In addition, his work has been published in a wide variety of magazines and newspapers including: Washington Monthly, The Nation, CBS Marketwatch, New Scientist, PC World, Dr. Dobb's Journal and Embedded Systems Journal

In 1991, he founded Wine Business Publications which he built into the largest circulation wine trade publications in North America. He sold that business in 1997.

Politics
Perdue took a sabbatical from being a daily journalist in 1978 when he went to Connecticut to manage a U.S. House of Representatives campaign. In addition to running political campaigns in Connecticut, Lew previously served as a top aide to Mississippi Governor Bill Waller(1973-1974) and U.S. Senator Thad Cochran (1974-1975 when Cochran was in the U.S. House of Representatives.)

Education
B.S. (With Distinction), 1972 Cornell University. Studies: biology, physics, communications.

Perdue worked his way through college as the full-time police and fire reporter/photographer for the Ithaca (NY) Journal, a Gannett newspaper. He previously worked as a sports reporter for another Gannett newspaper, The Elmira (NY) Star Gazette.

Lewis Perdue