It’s Elementary My Dear Watson*: The Public Domain Can Benefit Authors | Authors Alliance

"Yesterday Judge Richard Posner, writing for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, ruled that the copyrights in stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle and published before 1923 have expired, clearing the way for the publication of an anthology of new stories featuring Doyle’s famous detective Sherlock Holmes. Leslie S. Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd. (June 16, 2014). The expiration of copyright might sound like bad news for authors. But it can be very good news, indeed, and this case illustrates some of the reasons why. The lawsuit was brought by an author–not Arthur Conan Doyle of course (who, as Judge Posner noted in his opinion, died 84 years ago), but rather a living author and editor named Leslie Klinger. In 2011, Klinger co-edited A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon, an anthology of stories written by contemporary authors but featuring Sherlock Holmes and other characters from Doyle’s classic stories. Doyle’s estate demanded a $5000 copyright licensing fee, which Klinger’s publisher paid. But when the estate again demanded a licensing fee for the publication of Klinger’s planned sequel, In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, Klinger resisted. He asked a federal court to back him up by ruling (in what’s known as a 'declaratory judgment') that the copyright protection attached to the characters who would appear in the stories had expired and that In the Company of Sherlock Holmes could therefore be published without copyright permission or fee ..."