Sherlock Holmes heirs face “extortion” claim in damages ruling

The heirs to the estate of Sherlock Holmes creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, have been accused of extortion after demanding a licence from an author looking to portray the detective in a book.

It comes after copyright protection on the fictional detective expired.

The Conan Doyle Estate has been ordered to pay Leslie Klinger $30,679 in damages and told by a judge that its demands for licensing fees were “a form of extortion”.

In an opinion handed down at the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Monday, (August 4), judge Richard Posner said the Estate should change its business model “for its own self-interest” and praised Klinger for fighting against a “disreputable” business practice.

Posner was following up on his earlier ruling, from June 16, in which he said Holmes was in the public domain and authors were free to represent him in future works without needing to get permission.

That case, heard at the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, began after Klinger attempted to publish an anthology called In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, but was thwarted by the Estate.

After publishing house Pegasus, which represents Klinger, was contacted by the Estate to sign a licensing agreement, it refused and said it wanted a court to determine whether it could portray the character.

US copyright law states that works published before 1923 are in the public domain, meaning characters in them could theoretically be represented in later works.

The majority of Doyle’s work is already in the public domain. However, 10 of his short stories, published after 1923, continue to have copyright protection.

The Estate said copyright for the remaining ten stories was not due to expire until 2022 and that they contained significant character developments from earlier works, meaning any representation of Holmes would infringe the entire collection.

Both the district court and seventh circuit rejected the claims.

In his latest opinion, Posner said the Estate’s business strategy was plain to see.

“Charge a modest licence fee for which there is no legal basis, in the hope that the ‘rational’ writer or publisher will pay it rather than incur a greater cost, in legal expenses, in challenging the legality of the demand,” he wrote.

“The willingness of someone in Klinger’s position to sue rather than pay a modest licence fee is important because it injects risk into the Estate’s business model,” Posner added.

“It’s time the Estate, in its own self-interest, changed its business model.”

The Conan Doyle Estate did not respond immediately to a request for comment.