Update on the Sherlock Holmes Copyright Case
by John Aquino on 09/18/13
To recap: It is possible to claim copyright for a fictional character that stems from a particular work but that also exists outside of the particular work. In other words, the alleged infringer does not copy any specific wording from the copyrighted work but copies the character that the author had shaped in a unique and distinctive way. The character of Sherlock Holmes was created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887 in A Study in Scarlet. That novel and all Sherlock Holmes four novels and 46 short stories published before 1923 have fallen into the public domain. Doyle’s last collection of 10 Sherlock Holmes stories, The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes was published in 1927. Leslie S. Klinger, desiring to issue a collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories, filed litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, arguing that he was not required to obtain a license from the Doyle estate for these new stories because the character of Sherlock Holmes had fallen into the public domain along with the works in which he first appeared.
Prior to the Doyle estate’s legal reply to the complaint, I suggested that its argument would be that when Doyle wrote the post-1923 Sherlock Holmes stories he was not in the same position as any author writing a story about Sherlock Holmes. He was the creator and was taking up where he left off.
In its Sept. 10, 2013 reply to the lawsuit, the Doyle estate wrote, “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’ outlook on the world, and giving him new skills. And Sir Arthur did this in a non-linear way. Each of the Ten Stories is set at various points earlier in the two men’s lives—and even late stories create new aspects of the men’s youthful character. In other words, at any given point in their fictional lives, the characters depend on copyrighted character development.”
The estate went on to argue that a literary character is a single integrated work of authorship. There are not sixty versions of Sherlock Holmes in the 60 stories, the estate argued, there is one complex Sherlock Holmes.
Klinger has filed for a motion for summary judgment. The estate replied to the motion the day after its reply to the complaint, repeating its arguments cited earlier. And Klinger will respond to the reply. Then the court will decide on whether to grant summary judgment to Klinger or proceed with the litigation.
Copyright 2013 by John T. Aquino. This article does not constitute legal advice and is intended for educational purposes only.
