THE lengthy fight over copyright protection for Sherlock Holmes came to an end earlier this week. Judge Richard Posner, who earlier this year rejected an argument by Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate that would have extended the copyright on the author’s early Sherlock Holmes stories, smacked down the estate again, ordering them to pay author Leslie Klinger’s legal fees after trying to extract a licensing fee from him that he was not legally required to pay.
The battle provides a useful illustration of the ways in which copyright can impact not just the money artists and big companies can make from art, but the kind of art that they make.
Since Sherlock Holmes has entered the public domain, creators have been able to riff on the character, his best friend Dr John Watson, and the idea of deduction in a wide range of media. Certainly, Sherlock Holmes and Holmes variations are part of a larger trend in genius but anti-social heroes. But at least there is some variation in the Sherlock stories that have flooded the marketplace in recent years thanks to the lapsing of the copyright on Conan Doyle’s stories.
