No Wonder The Judgment Took So Long (UPDATED)

The judge who wrote the judgment in The Da Vinci Code copyright case has apparently embedded a secret code in the text! You can find a copy of the judgment here. Decoding it is far more work than I care to do and the opinion itself is quite interesting -- especially contrasting the way Justice Smith reported on the facts of the case and the way an American judge would have. Justice Smith has plenty of both kind and unkind words for pretty much everyone except the plaintiffs, for whom he has substantially more unkind than kind words. Well, he did rule against them, after all.

If you've got the idle time and the interest in such matters, there should be a tremendously good time to be had picking out the code and trying to figure out what he is saying.

UPDATE (April 29): Some lawyer with way more time than me figured it out. "Jackie Fisher, who are you? Dreadnought." Admiral Fisher of His Majesty's Royal Navy was the driving force behind the creation of the HMS Dreadnought, at the time the largest battleship ever made. Apparently, Judge Smith is a naval enthusiast. So there you have it. Kind of disappointing.