A Coda on the Sherlock Holmes' Copyright
by John Aquino on 09/01/14
As a coda to the previous blog on the copyright to the character of Sherlock Holmes, I note that the following.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois held that the Conan Doyle Estate did not own copyright in the characters in the Sherlock Holmes stories published before 1923. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling June 16, 2014 and on Aug. 4 it awarded Leslie S. Klinger, the plaintiff in the case, $30,000 in attorneys fees he spent in the appeal. Klinger then asked the district court for attorneys fees of $50,000 he spent in the district court’s case.
In opposing those fees, the Conan Doyle Estate Aug. 18 wrote that attorneys fees are awarded to the prevailing party and that Klinger had not prevailed on his claim that his forthcoming book had not infringed the Conan Doyle copyrights.
The Estate wrote that Klinger claimed that the issue before the court was whether the publication of his forthcoming book infringes any copyright owned by the Conan Doyle Estate but declined to provide the book to the court and admitted the book was not completed. The Estate wrote that it had submitted substantial facts and argument on the scope of that copyrighted character formation, but the court did not address what the scope of that protection was, and did not (and could not) apply it to Klinger’s forthcoming book.
The Estate also noted that it had prevailed on some of the issues before the court. The court rejected Klinger’s argument that the story elements of the 10 post-1923 Sherlock Holmes stories were not protected by copyright and denied Klinger’s request for injunctive relief over any of the Sherlock Holmes story elements.
The Estate wrote, “And in arguing for full protection for the developments in Holmes’ character created in those Ten Stories, Conan Doyle pointed out that it is one thing to say as a theory that a public domain version of Holmes can be disentangled from the complete character formed in the Ten Stories. But it is quite another thing to actually do so without infringing the Ten Stories. Because the Ten Stories were set at various points in Holmes’s fictional life, in practice it is difficult if not impossible to use a public domain version of Holmes that does not infringe the Ten Stories….Because Mr. Klinger has never put his new book before any court, and the issue as to whether it infringes has yet to be decided, he cannot claim to be entitled to compensation for pursuing a rightful case, or for purposes of deterring Conan Doyle’s contention that a declaratory judgment should be made only on concrete facts.”
The plaintiff will respond and then the court will decide on the issue of attorneys fees.
