A study in copyright: Is the character Sherlock Holmes still protected?

According to U.S. copyright law, all works published before 1923 are in the public domain. Those that came later remain under copyright for as long as 95 years after the author's death.

For many works, this is not a complicated process. But some larger works of intellectual property published over a period of years have proven problematic.

One example is that of Sherlock Holmes. The famous fictional detective appeared alongside his friend, Dr. John Watson, in novels and short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle between 1891 to 1927.

Of Conan Doyle's body of work, everything published before 1923 has passed into the public domain. However, the stores published after that date remain in copyright until 2022.

This has raised an interesting question: Are the characters Watson and Holmes still covered?

In February, Holmes expert and entertainment lawyer Leslie Klinger filed a lawsuit arguing that the characters had, in fact entered the public domain. At the time, according to the Guardian, Klinger was seeking to write a book on the characters without paying a license fee to the Conan Doyle estate.

The estate, meanwhile, has prepared a defense that argues for the protection of "complex literary characters." The defense argues that important details about characters are constantly developed throughout a series and must be protected.

"The facts are that Sir Arthur continued creating the characters in the copyrighted Ten Stories, adding significant aspects of each character's background, creating new history about the dynamics of their own relationship, changing Holmes's outlook on the world, and giving him new skills," read a statement from the defense. "And Sir Arthur did this in a non-linear way."

Klinger has until later this month to respond.

Categorised in: Entertainment Law

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